Broadway Malayan Liverpool housing

http://www.e-architect.co.uk/images/jpgs/liverpool/mann_island_liverpool_bm07.jpg

Lessons for Students in Architecture

"The work of Herman Hertzberger is the subject of wide international esteem. In this book, the background to his work and the ideas underlying it are put into words by the architect himself. It presents a broad spectrum of subjects and designs, with practical experience and evaluation of the use of these buildings serving as a leitmotif.
The book divides into three parts: Public Domain, Making Space Leaving Space, and Inviting Form. By arranging texts and designs into a number of themes Hertzberger has managed to direct his broad practical experience into a fascinating theory. In his view everyone - the more he sees, experiences, and absorbs - is automatically in possession of an ever-expanding arsenal of potential instructions with which to choose a path towards a result. More than 750 illustrations give a broad insight into Hertzbergers library and a stimulating impression of one of the most important Dutch architects alive today. Rather than supplying the reader with design recipes, Hertzberger has provided an essential source of inspiration to everyone involved in some way with the design process."

http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Lessons_for_Students_in_Architecture.html?id=iw5Jczr3zkwC

Donnybrook by Peter Barber Architects

“Donnybrook is one of the most innovative housing projects to be undertaken in the UK for decades…
It is not impossible to imagine that in 10 years time, Donnybrook might be remembered as a significant turning point in the culture of British housing 
provision” 
Ellis Woodman, Building Design Magazine, 24th February 2006

http://www.peterbarberarchitects.com/01_Donny.html

Arte Povera

This might be interesting for those of you interested in casting....Guiseppe Penone, of the Arte Povera movement.
The installation will be on show at the Whitechapel Gallery until August 2013 so drop by and have a look.


GIUSEPPE PENONE - Spazio Di Luce - An Installation for the Whitechapel Gallery from Martin Hampton on Vimeo.


Another project he mentions briefly is this:

London Calling...

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, we are now leaving the sunny climes of Portugal and we shall shortly be arriving in London where the temperature is 3 degrees Celsius and wet.
Be sure to wrap up warm on any planned expeditions.

Find attached a link to the site map of the earl's court re-development. LINK
As discussed today, the map has 23 clearly defined boundaries which straddle the periphery of the redevelopment as well as an area within the development zone. You must pick a site that relates to your areas of investigation from P02. 1 site per student.
You will be asked to confirm which site you have chosen at Thursday's pin-up.....

....and before you head into town a couple of videos to inspire you:

London Bus Tour from moritz oberholzer on Vimeo.

....and finally an interesting talk from Simon Withers of Architecture Diploma Unit 15 at the University of Greenwich. About working with Vivienne Westwood and Malcom Mclaren at their renowned World's End shop in west London, 16th Century armour, the Kelly Gang, and making universes out of one's studio.


Sun, Sea and Piracy from Jonathan Hagos on Vimeo.

London (Re)Generation

An interesting publication on regeneration in London, would be worth a read. There is an article about the Earl's Court Project, which would be worth photocopying and putting up in the unit space.

Here is a link to the google books preview LINK

Earl's Court 2030

As we draw an end to our projects in Portugal, perhaps it's now time to start re-considering Earls' Court.

Have a look back at the website myearlscourt.com, as there are some interesting new updates including an edition of TimeOut London focusing on the Earl's Court area (post re-development) in 2030. It's very much a fictional 'moodboard' for the proposed development and was interestingly given out to local residents who visited the masterplan exhibition drop-in sessions and the 21,000 homes in the vicinity of the development.

Publisher's disclaimer - "this guide is a vision, not a blueprint".

Also, an interesting link to the Cultural Strategy for the Earl's Court Project LINK

Millionaire Boy Racers

All,

A stone's throw from our sites - the millionaire boy racers of sloane street...

A must watch:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/millionaire-boy-racers/4od

Anthony Gormley @ White Cube/Bermondsey

This exhibition is not to be missed!

Anthony Gormley

White Cube Bermondsey

28th November 2012 - 10 February 2013

White Cube Bermondsey is pleased to present ‘Model’, an exhibition of major new works by Antony Gormley. Challenging the physical possibilities of the gallery space, this ambitious exhibition investigates our experience of architecture through the body and of the body through architecture.

Made in direct response to the space of the South Galleries is the vast, new work Model (2012), which is also the title of the exhibition. Fabricated from 100 tonnes of weathering sheet steel, the work is both sculpture and building, human in form but at no point visible as a total figure. Visitors will be able to enter the work through a 'foot' and journey through its inter-connected internal chambers, the sculpture demanding that we adjust our pace and bend our bodies to its awkward yet absolute geometry. The experience of this analogy for the 'dark interior of the body' is guided by anticipation and memory and the direct and indirect light which penetrates the structure and which leads us on, as if through a labyrinth.

The central corridor of the gallery will hold new sculptures built of solid iron blocks whose uncompromising orthogonals belie their emotional punch. Propping up the architecture, articulating a corner or lying flat on the ground, these dark works test the bounding condition of the space. Their sculptural language is highly reduced, in some cases so schematic that the body form is rendered purely abstract, but without any loss of human empathy.

The exhibition also features a selection of Gormley's working models, installed on a series of tables. Revealing processes that can be both playful and disciplined, the installation suggests a workshop full of ideas and procedures, methods and materials. 

These works, together with a series of new expansion pieces, create an exhibition which powerfully extends Gormley's exploration of the body as a site of transformation.

Andrew Holmes @ Plus one gallery

The Plus One Gallery is exhibiting the hyper-realist paintings of Andrew Holmes, demonstrating his interest in the impact of ‘an oil hungry civilisation’. The artist has recently constructed a mobile sculpture in California from four ‘Ford Thunderbird Landau Coupes’ built in the 1970s, the era of the first oil crisis. Entitled ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’, the sculpture plays upon the mythological story in which the horsemen come to announce the end of the world. The paintings included within this collection express a continuing descent into corruption and poverty and include four drawings representing different aspects of the four horsemen - Victory, War, Pestilence and Death. The artist’s skill with coloured pencil is enviable and visitors to the exhibition can expect to be impressed by dramatic drawings of motor vehicles, rendered in minute detail.

Andrew Holmes

“Andrew Holmes is Britain‘s leading SuperRealist artist. He is also an architect and one of the original Richard Rogers four-person practice, a long time unit master at the Architectural Association and latterly at the University of Westminster. For three decades he has been working on, …, a 100-picture series called Gas Tank City. It records the storage tanks, trucks and trailers of the highways of the West Coast desert and that artificial urban oasis, Los Angeles, which Holmes has visited annually since he was a student at the AA. These, says Holmes, have replaced such traditional buildings as the barn and have, in some ways, become architecture. If that sounds like an echo of Reyner Banham and Archigram and Cedric Price and their interest in architectural transience and mobility, that is because it is. But it is also to put too architectural a gloss on his work which is sheerly beautiful. Holmes says anyway that the early Rogers connection is more relevant. ‚The truck epitomises more what those early ideas were originally about‘: simple steel construction, ready-mades, ad hoc-ness, design-as-accruing.”

http://www.realisticpictures.co.uk/

Two Projects

Max Lamb's Hexagonal Pewter Stool & Markus Kayser's Solar Sinter project





An important point that should be made is that both these projects were developed by the designers whilst they were at University and the themes raised have continued to be the key polemics for both, going some way to prove that your interests explored whilst a student needn't be discarded in practice.

Neighbourhoods

Tom has found an interesting video by Vera Danilina, which portrays 'two contrary places that are connected by stylistic features. It is about the metropolis New York City (USA) and the provincial Dessau (GER)'

Atelier Urban Nomads

A quick post with some links to the work of Lisbon/London based architect Luísa Alpalhao, who kindly presented her work to us in during our field trip.

www.alinhaalfama.wordpress.com

www.jogosderua.wordpress.com

Dismantling Landscapes

...trying to figure out how to take apart the landscape they stand on, reducing it to a raw geometry of cubes and blocks, measured shapes juxtaposed with the wilderness beyond....

link to bldgblog article -  go!!

Where discovery begins...

....just in case you had forgotten

Ingenuity and Invention

The proposed quarry installation will require ingenuity and invention:

Surveying

Charting

Envisaging

Proposing

Making

Defining

Sequencing

Testing

Highlighting

Curating

Recording

Disguising


Imprinting

Gesturing

Field Trip Booklet

The Unit H field trip booklet is now available to download.

Daily Dose of Architecture

Announcement to Unit H students.....

As you may have noticed the blog is now up and running. The function of the blog is to supplement conversations had in tutorials and to provide some food for thought (or Vitamins as we tend to call them with my unit at Greenwich.)

Either way we must stress that it is really down to you all to make use of this and to take regular supplements! We will certainly be posting and updating frequently, at least once a week so do pop by regularly.

We have also now uploaded a recommended film list under the heading 'Video' - films (as I am sure you are already aware) are fantastic viewing during moments of lethargy. Hopefully these films will expand on ways of reading the city.

As with all the contents of the blog, and in particular the reading lists and film list there is no requirement to go through all of them. Do research prior to purchase/borrowing to ensure that at least there is some relationship to your individual project agendas.

J

The City as a Metaphor

City Metaphors....

"I would like to be able to read maps the same way that I read photographs. Meaning, to enable my first impressions to be filled with analogies, metaphors, and symbolism but instead, the rational mind takes over and I see measured facts and deadpan reality. For the German architect Oswald Mathias Ungers however, bridging imaginative perception and a blueprint from a city planner produced a fascinating book titled City Metaphors just re-published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig.

Originally appearing in 1982, City Metaphors presents over 50 pairings of various city maps throughout history with images from science and nature. Each of the pairings is then "titled" with a single descriptive word printed in both English and German.

In Ungers' mind, the division of Venice becomes a handshake, a spirally designed city in India becomes the universe, the plan of the city of St Gallen, Merian from 1809 becomes a womb and so on. Easily, the formal similarities can be seen in each pairing but there is the third level of perception introduced by the title. The factual reality (the plan), the perceived reality (the image), and the conceptual reality (the word). 

As Ungers writes in his foreword; The way we experience the world around us depends on how we perceive it. Without a comprehensive vision the reality will appear as a mass of unrelated phenomenon and meaningless facts, in other words, totally chaotic. In such a world it would be like living in a vacuum; everything would be of equal importance; nothing could attract our attention; and there would be no possibility to utilize the mind."

Text taken from 5b4.blogspot.co.uk

Note to all - it is only from the initial observation that we are able to perceive, abstract and posit.

Taking Measures....

Taking Measures Across the American Landscape by James Corner (Field Operations - look them up)

and Alex MacLean.