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Diploma 7 – 2014/15
The Department of Not-Usually-Valued-Knowledge
This unit - essentially a non-unit but rather a zone – pursues its central interest in an architecture that is conditioned by the processes and technologies of
search and retrieval. We really do mean search and not research: the rigorous pursuit of approximation. The zone speculates on the architectural consequences of
today's nature of continuous ventilation and circulation of information – a territory we call New Nature.
Speed, Time and Interval are the principal components for designing to a specific life-span: a rolling composition of discreet adaptions rather than seismic
impositions, a new picturesque - imperfect and always incomplete.
Students are invited to respond to a series of provocations* that are concerned with a time-based architectural order - rethinking them in the light of now.
Each student will design, build and edit their own bill of quantities to include technical and cultural components with consideration to time, form and behaviour.
Film-as-a-sketch-book will be used as the means of both documentation and articulation of an idea, which in turn will inform the making of Moving Drawings
– the precise means for searching the on-going systems of an idea.
It is in this context that we will search for the New Nature properties of two island habitats: Venice, Italy and Wallasea Island, Essex…
We encourage a multiple aesthetic, individual interests and collective action across the school - expect the unexpected.
We are not interested in solutions but in responses.
We ask that students take care of their ideas and be generous with them too.
We work with design paradoxes.
We will work collaboratively throughout the year with expert searchers in the fields of architecture, digital anthropology, art, geology, journalism, landscape,
filmmaking and digital animation.
 We will travel within a 3 hours hour radius of WC1 to dial codes 00441702 and 003941
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Zone Caretakers: David Greene, Samantha Hardingham,
* 2014/15 design provocations:
http://gizmodo.com/poachers-can-use-your-geotagged-safari-photos-to-hunt-d-1572906832; Tiny Turbines, National Geographic, July2014; Two Tree Island
treat (1971) by Cedric Price; Two plates from Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening by Humphrey Repton (William Bulmer & Co., 1795) . Collage by
Patrick Morris.
Zoom into Zone 7……
 We are well-serviced primitives, exploring the architecture of New Nature. We have been working for three years now, wading through digital dirt, and have
already begun to picture an out-in-the-open spatial ambience; super-foreground and super-background has been added to our field of vision courtesy of Sir
Humphrey Repton. A state of permanent mutual awareness is pronounced.
 The architecture of the New Nature evolves from a culture whose dominant raw materials exist outside the visible spectrum: digital anthropology meets
the sublime anthropocene. Its emerging characteristics include the observation of landscape (in its broadest sense from political to environmental to
domestic), of human behaviours (domestic life and its adaptions in relation to new communications technologies) and of technologies of approximation,
(adaptive and responsive – learning, new uses for old, unlikely uses for new).
 We are interested in architecture as the by-product of a continuum of design paradoxes. We look for time-based design responses that work with a collision
between the subsurface components of land/earth/environment and the ultra-surface of smaller-lighter-faster technologies of information and
construction, aiming at the precise design of approximation.
 Wallasea Island is a new island - the by-product of London’s Crossrail, currently the largest civil engineering project in Europe and discontinuous city of
10,000 citizens. The island is presently inhabited by birds and can only be visited by boat. It sits adjacent to the Essex coastal town of Burnham-on-Crouch,
which is easily accessible from London by train. The specifics of an island habitat is chosen to continue our speculations on architectural typologies particular
to New Nature and this year, in relation to water, weather and manufactured ground. Venice will also serve as a case study – island as a by-product of a
mercantile system.
 We ask students to invent relevant forms of dynamic response and representation (film, animation and moving drawing) to search and describe a project. A
study of essential characteristics will be undertaken, and will include collaborations with members of the British Geological Survey team and Crossrail, artists
John Walter and Bruce McLean, architectural historian Irénne Scalbert and contributors to the Swiss pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2014 amongst others.
They are our antennae for enlightenment.
 Architectural scale and order can only be derived from space in time. Engineer, Werner Sobek (after Price) would assert that “architecture isn’t here to stay”
– do you agree? Accept that water, earth, air, pixels, sun, and human behaviours are all included in the lexicon of architectural components for a post-digital
construction site.
 In Zone 7 we think one of Cedric Price's special talents was in making design observations - which might also mean spotting a design opportunity.
His design proposals were then in line with his own preferences (what are yours?) for:
- relevant life-span
- available technologies
- ability to adapt and change
That is the model of CP we hope to adopt in Zone 7.
Key words:
New Nature
Film-as-Sketchbook
Moving Drawing
Search not research
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By-product
Approximation
Multiple Aesthetic
Multiple Tutoring
Pirates not the navy
TO DO: over the course of 32 weeks.
In general the unit will meet twice each week – once for discussion, once for seminar and/or presentation and review of new work. A number of workshops will be
undertaken. The unit space will be used as a studio not an office.
Search One:
To encourage multiple confusion, individual interests and be aware of: the unexpected response.
An invitation to respond to a series of architectural and design projects that each suggest a variety of optimum responses to designing for the exchange of information:
http://gizmodo.com/poachers-can-use-your-geotagged-safari-photos-to-hunt-d-1572906832
Tiny Turbines, National Geographic, July2014
Two Tree Island treat (1971) by Cedric Price;
Two plates from Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening by Humphrey Repton (William Bulmer & Co., 1795)
All projects are precise in their approximation of Location, Form, Time and Behaviour.
Develop your search skills to design and build a bill of quantities, qualities and intent for each project: a thorough investigation of each project, edited and to be presented to the rest of the
unit and guests.
By thorough we mean to achieve an understanding of Form, Time and Behaviour: the expression of an idea on paper, material/fabrication/assembly investigations, conditions of context; site,
social, political or otherwise and full immersion of the imagination in how to communicate the findings effectively.
A minimum of 8 film-sketches will be produced over 11 weeks.
Medium for presentation – Film-as-sketchbook. Moving drawing.
Supporting material – Bill of Quantities on paper.
Workshops/seminars:
Samantha Hardingham – Cedric Price and an Architecture of Approximation.
David Greene – L.A.W.u.N and New Nature.
Bruce McLean – A Short History of Land Art/Earth work.
Irènne Scalbert – 2 seminars: Technology and Pastoral Ideal.
John Walter - Maximal Hospitality.
Toby Shew – Searchology.
Giulio Bertelli - Real-time fabrication on and near the water.
Theo Spyropoulos - Sensitive Systems.
John Fraser - Angry Gardens - Stowe.
Holger Kessler of the British Geological Survey - The planet as part of the internet of things.
Attend a half day conference organised by the British Geological Survey entitled – The Geology under London and the Thames Valley.
Site visit and workshop with Contributors to the Swiss pavilion, Venice Biennale 2014 in Venice.
Site visit to Wallasea Island, Essex and the Firstsite Gallery, Colchester.
TS5 – Proposal will be discussed with design tutors then put to TS tutors - investigation & evaluation of subject matter – plan organization and testing.
Search Two:
Sufficiently incomplete – solve unrelated problems by relating them.
Rethink and re-edit all information in the context of now and make an initial design proposal for an architecture for the continuous circulation and ventilation of information that engages the
simultaneous search, storage, retrieval and deployment information at a designated time and location. Consideration of all altered factors required: the idea, the expression of that idea on
paper, material/fabrication/assembly investigations, conditions of context site; social, political or otherwise.
Medium for presentation – Film-as-sketchbook + Moving Drawing series 1
Supporting material – Bill of Quantities on paper
TS5 – Apply agreed proposal to design project: outline several aspects but focus on one.
INTERVAL
Christmas Vacation Proto-design competition
Search Three:
Acceptance of the truth should be considered and most likely questioned.
Draw on aspects of the initial design proposal presented in the medium of film and develop by remaking as a set of physical models. Undertake site investigations – document in model
and/or drawings to scale, thoroughly and beautifully. Re-visit possibilities for materials technologies in relation to the site and articulate through design proposal.
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Medium for presentation – Moving drawing series 2
Supporting material – Bill of Quantities on paper
Workshops/seminars:
TBC – Philippe Parreno, artist/filmmaker
TBC – Paul Barker, journalist, editor of New Society (1968-86).
TBC – Ben Morris – lightweight material systems
TBC – Stefana Broadbent – Digital Anthropology, UCL.
INTERVAL
TS5 – submission
Search Four: No artefact is a work of art unless is humanizes us.
All technical solutions are aesthetic solutions
Design refinement and representation. Preparation of project/portfolio for final review. Construction of exhibition.
Medium for presentation – MOVING DRAWING + BOOK
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HTS statement:
Diploma 7 will actively engage in the HTS course materials, serving as a worthwhile analytical tool for the enhancement of design work.
TS 5 brief – Lose Weight Now:
Diploma 7 presumes that all design questions generate a technical response and therefore the technical study forms an intrinsic part of the design project and is integrated into the portfolio.
We borrow R.B. Fuller’s question: “how much does your building weigh?” to focus the unit’s interest: investigating technologies of the sub-surface and the ultra-surface, to develop an agile
architecture that is responsive to changes in form, location and behavior. This year our site is Wallasea Island – constructed with the soil by-product of tunneling Crossrail in London. With this
in mind we are specifically interested in by-products, both technical processes and operations and new socio-cultural patterns.
We look for new uses for old technologies and possible uses for new technologies, specifically in relation to materials and structures. Questions of life-span, size, movement, intended and
unintended use, and planned obsolescence are all critical for understanding an architecture of approximation.
The appropriate means of deployment of each line of technical investigation will vary from project to project, but the unit expects that every study be tested by way of physical and /or digital
modeling to scale, acquisition of sample materials from manufacturers and analysis through moving drawing of possible applications or misappropriations.
Each student will identify an area of technical investigation in the first and second film sketchbooks that focuses on a technical process or approach: one traditional and one innovative. During
Term 1 they will refine their knowledge of their chosen area through in-depth searches and observing and recording primary sources. Areas to study will include components, fabrication
processes and applications – all to be documented in a Bill of Quantities. In Term 2 this specialist knowledge will be applied and tested within the environment of the design project –
documented in the Bill of Quantities and demonstrated in models and drawings at relevant scales.
Medium for presentation – Moving Drawing + Book
Sufficiently provisional and temporary resources for searching the post-digital construction site……
A new list is currently under construction and will be posted shortly….but it is certain to include:
Book, Paper and TV Things:
Beardsley, J. Earthworks and Beyond (1998)
Marx, L. The Machine in the Garden (2000)
Murch, Walter, In the Blink of an Eye: A Persepctive on Film Editing (Sliman-James Press, 2001).
Eds. Cousins, Mark & MacDonald, Kevin, Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary (Faber & Faber, 2006)
Fuller, R.B., Anthology for a New Millenium, ‘Comprehensive Designing’, from Ideas and Integrities, 1963, pp.69-76.
Humphry Repton, Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening, W. Bulmer & Co., London (1795)
Barker, P., Banham, R.P., Hall, P., Price, C., Non-Plan: an Experiment in Freedom, New Society, 20th March 1969Non-Plan Revisited: Or the Real Way Cities Grow: The Tenth Reyner Banham
Memorial Lecture, Paul Barker, Journal of Design History, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1999), pp. 95-110
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace – TV series directed by Adam Curtis. (2011)
Digitial Things:
World information
www.newspapermap.com
http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html
Robotics
www.festo.com
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/12/robot-art-tour-tate-britain-at-night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkVBg_-OviI
Editing
Video Co-pilot
https://vimeo.com/90150897
Highrise
http://highrise.nfb.ca/prologue
The British Textile technology Group
http://www.bttg.co.uk
The Building Research Establishment
http://www.bre.co.uk
http://tunnellingjournal.com/
Miscellaneous
SSION Clown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW_tXgGrVu0
Vlogumentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVvCA-q64Oo
youtube /Cargo spotter
http://www.skyboximaging.com/
Intermediate Unit 5 previous work 2012/13 - http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/STUDY/UNDERGRADUATE/?name=int5
Diploma 7 microsite.
http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/PORTFOLIO/MICROSITES/microsite.php?title=Diploma%207&return=../../STUDY/UNDERGRADUATE/?name=dip7&url=dip7.aaschool.ac.uk
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