Cloud, 2011 at York Hall, Historic Boxing Venue, London.
photo: James Harris
Thursday 15 December 2011
Folly For a Flyover - Assemble
Conceived and built by a collective of young artists, designers and architects known as Assemble (most of whom studied together at Cambridge). Folly for a Flyover was on site in Hackney Wick last summer.
The Yard
Built from reclaimed materials reclaimed from London’s Olympic Park, The Yard theatre is a temporary creative and collaborative performance space that has popped-up in the city’s east district of Hackney Wick. Open for three months, summer to fall, the converted warehouse has become a site for theater, dance and opera performances by emerging directors. The Yard has also helped boost and inspire the local theatrical community.
Read more: Creative Pop-up Theater Built With Recycled Materials From London's Olympic Park |
Read more: Creative Pop-up Theater Built With Recycled Materials From London's Olympic Park |
Ian Sinclair - Ghost Milk
It is a story of incident and accident, of the curious meeting the bizarre. Sinclair writes of being a labourer in Stratford, of Orwellian steps to ban a book launch in a library, of the fundamentalist visions of J.G. Ballard. Stories of police raids and mass expulsions jostle with accounts of failed grand projects: the Millennium Dome, Thames Gateway, and numerous other half-completed, ill-advised or abandoned structures.
Burrowing under the perimeter fence of the grandest of Grand Projects - the giant myth that is 2012's London Olympics - Ghost Milk is a road map to a possible future as well as Iain Sinclair's most powerful statement yet on the throwaway impermanence of the present
David Kohn - White Building Hackney Wick
Community Arts Centre, Hackney Wick 2010-12
Hackney Wick and Fish Island are located immediately west of the Olympics site, and have been identified by the London Development Agency as a key component of the ‘Olympic Fringe’. These areas are integral to the LDA’s vision that the Legacy of the 2012 Olympics will fundamentally improve conditions - physical, social and economic - across East London.
The competition entry proposed that the White Building be a space for creativity that:
1 Is built by local people for local people2 Foregrounds the pleasures of making
3 Resonates with the history of the area
4 Works with the existing building fabric
5 Demonstrates innovative sustainable design
6 Is realised affordably and quickly
7 Shows a past and future London at the Olympics
http://www.davidkohn.co.uk/projects/current/white-building/
Wednesday 14 December 2011
S T U D I O. M U M B A I.
The Practice
Founded by Bijoy Jain, Studio Mumbai is a human infrastructure of skilled craftsmen and architects who design and build the work directly. Gathered through time, this group shares an environment created from an iterative process, where ideas are explored through the production of large-scale mock-ups, models, material studies, sketches and drawings. Here projects are developed through careful consideration of place and a practice that draws from traditional skills, local building techniques, materials, and an ingenuity arising from limited resources. The essence of our work lies in the relationship between land and architecture, it requires coming to terms with the presence of the environment through the succession of seasons.
- Nandgaon, Marharashtra, India
‘It’s impossible to have a favourite,’ explains Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) curator Abraham Thomas, ‘however, Studio Mumbai captured the spirit of our exhibition perfectly’. Staged to demonstrate ideas about refuge and retreat, the V&A’s recent exhibition, 1:1 - Architects Build Small Spaces (www.vam.ac.uk/smallspaces), features seven temporary pavilions designed by practices yet to build in the UK.
Thomas credits the AR’s Awards for Emerging Architecture as his principal source of inspiration, with many of the 19 firms who were invited to make proposals being familiar to these pages. This study focuses on one of the seven finalists, Studio Mumbai’s entry, In-Between Architecture, and follows a visit to Alibaug, India, where the AR witnessed the prefabrication of the piece at first hand.
With a more conventional design studio in Mumbai, most of the firm’s hard graft takes place in a rural plantation 30km away, where founder Bijoy Jain and over 100 craftsmen work together in simple shelters or beneath the trees, designing, prototyping and constructing.
‘In our practice,’ explains Jain, ‘there is no separation between artisan and architect. Every part of the process is exposed and everyone takes their share of responsibility.’
This equitable, craft-led attitude to producing architecture was first introduced to Jain in Los Angeles, where he worked in the model shop of Richard Meier (making models for the Getty Museum) while studying under Studio Works founder Robert Mangurian.
His tutor was, he says, instrumental in initiating him into this method of working. Following a brief period practising in London, Jain returned to India in 1995 to set up the Studio Mumbai workshop, a vast operation that makes Renzo Piano’s urban equivalent look insignificant by comparison.
‘Our way is quite medieval, recalling a time when architects were builders,’ says Jain. It is, however, far from archaic, with Jain running an extremely tight ship. Working closely with their clients on bespoke houses they operate on an open-book, cost-plus-profit basis, so the client always knows where their money is going. They also produce large-scale mock-ups and prototypes that add a creative transparency to the process, which gives clients the confidence to proceed with what are often quite sizeable investments.
Studio Mumbai currently produces two or three houses a year, but Jain is confident that he will be able to take on bigger contracts. This is largely down to his increasingly confident and highly skilled workforce. ‘It’s incredible,’ he says, ‘people with skills just turn up to work and some are part of a 60-generation lineage of craftsmen.’ Prior to coming here to work, it is likely that few of these men had any idea of their true value. Now they have a contemporary focus for their skill, and with many of them becoming long term collaborators, there can be no suspicion of exploitation.
Congratulations to Oak Lodge School
I was fortunate enough to work with Oak Lodge School in Open City's Architecure in Secondary Schools Programme. This is a unique programme for secondary schools and sixth forms. Direct experience of contemporary architecture is the starting point for developing design skills and awareness of the built environment, together with creative workshops. Students, with a built environment professional, explore an exemplary building, unpack the design, then develop design ideas during a classroom workshop. Architecture is a valuable educational resource, and the programme empowers both teachers and students to take advantage of it.
Oak Lodge with their design proposal for St Bede's Deaf Club in Clapham have won the KS3 Design Development Award. The judges were also unanimous in their decision that the design from Oak Lodge School was the Overall Winner of the Architecture in Schools Awards 2011 across all the Key Stages!
Students worked with Deaf architect Martin Glover to create designs to "re-imagine" a space for an existing Deaf club located in St Bede's Church, Clapham. This project highlights architectural concepts specifically focused towards “Deaf spaces” and the development of a 21st century “community hub”.
Learn more about the project here
- Kate
Monday 12 December 2011
Tuesday 6 December 2011
E R W I N. H A U E R.
Above is the first geometric exercise done in AA_Emtech. As the utilization of component-based form in parametric architectural design, a novel component with multi-dimensional continuity has been employed into a innovative design process. Erwin Hauer, a American Sculptor who is wildly known as a proponent of Modular Constructivism, had done varieties of sculptures which inspirited architectural process a lot.
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