Patamatic cinema. Thomas Wiesner in the Forum
A review of Thomas Wiesner's lecture in the Forum, Tuesday 24 November 2009. The human eye features two types of photoreceptors: at the centre of the retina approximately 4.5 million ‘cone’ cells are concentrated, good at distinguishing detail and colour, while distributed away from the centre there are roughly 90 million ‘rod’ cells, which aren’t. The rod cells are great for distinguishing movement in low light and are used in peripheral vision, helping us to avoid sabre-toothed tigers in the night. Peripheral vision gives rise to an …
Every building has a story to tell.
Studio 3 in Frankfurt
Studio 3 has just come back from a very engaged studio trip to Kronberg, Frankfurt. This year Undergraduate Studio 3 with tutors Sandra Denicke-Polcher and Torange Khonsari have been commissioned to design and build the Event Spaces for the Cultural Summer Festival 2010 in Kronberg, Frankfurt. The trip has been joined by Stef Rhodes from ASD Projects to support the live work. This project has a real client, budget and construction deadline and students learn what it takes to bring an architectural idea on site. In Kronberg, all 18 students lived with …
Sharp edges: Unit 1 in Monpazier, France
A short summary of Diploma Unit 1ʼs trip to Monpazier in Southern France A quick look at the clear grid plan of Monpazier, a well-preserved example of a medieval Bastide town in the Dordogne region of France, might well lead one to believe that a week was a long time to spend in such a small, apparently simple town. The clarity of its geometry and strongly defined boundary belies the richness and subtle complexity of the place, which nestles on a crest of a rolling French agricultural landscape. Travelling by train to Bergerac and by coach to …
Of signing a contract. Inside the Free Unit
All architecture students have an idea of what a contract is to a varying degree. Those of us with some experience of working in a practice know that there exist contractors and contracts to be signed with them, and that the other party (it appears) will always try to do everything in their power to make you breach the contract, so as to get out of fulfilling their side of it, later suggesting that you should have seen it coming. There seems to be something inhumane about a contract – is it not some physical proof that we are not prepared to trust …
Hyphens and quotes. Stephen Bates at the Forum
A review of Stephen Bates of Sergison Bates architects presents: The London Sustainable Industries Park, Dagenham, 27 October 2009, 1:00pm, in the Forum Resolutely wholesome, sustainability and industry are on the lunchtime agenda. The commissioned park – a fragment of the Thames Gateway 'mixed-use, high density, long-term' regeneration – is framed by the river, the A13, Dagenham Rail and Ford Works. Sergison Bates are to reactivate this industrial landscape with a business park, which celebrates the London Riverside heritage, as well as …
Unit 5 speed dating
There is a kind of play common to nearly every child: it is to get under a piece of furniture or some extemporized shelter of his own and to explain that he is in a ‘house’… It is a symbolism – of a fundamental kind, expressed in terms of play. This kind of play has much to do with the aesthetics of architecture. Heavenly Mansions – An Interpretation of Gothic by John Summerson, 1963 Unit 5 are exploring spaces for music and performance in secondary schools and over the coming year will be collaborating with five schools in Croydon, working …
Other landscapes
A report on Unit 7’s visit to the Suffolk coast. Orford Ness is a National nature reserve formed on a shingle spit on the Suffolk coastline. The barren windswept terrain, which holds a delicate and protected vegetated shingle habitat, was once home to the UK’s Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. Remnants of this era remain sparsely scattered around the island. Buildings deserted and gradually decaying make for a desolate world so consuming that it is possible to forget one’s proximity to the nearby Orford, connected by a short boat ride over …
Astronomers on the deck of this lost longship: Charles Barclay’s Kielder Observatory
A review of Charles Barclay's lecture in the Forum, 2 April 2009, 6.30pm [caption id="attachment_416" align="alignnone" width="380" caption="Charles Barclay, Kielder ObservatoryCharles BarclayCharles Barclay"][/caption] Charles Barclay’s presentation of his practice’s competition-winning astronomical observatory, which was completed a year ago high up in the wilds of Northumbria (away from the light pollution which effects much of the night sky of Britain), revealed a practice of serious intent whose unpretentious attitude towards an unusual …
Other Utopias: David Kohn Architects at the ASD Gallery
A 'space of difference' or, to be more precise, an 'other space' is the idea that literally describes the concept that names David Kohn Architects’ project entry for the Arts Space of the Future competition in 2008 – Heterotopia. Both otherness and difference imply distance; subjectively from the self, collectively from culture, spatially from the mundane places of everyday life. Conceptually, the project emphasize distance by an act of removal - 'Our proposal was conceived as a place in which to question our everyday reality, once removed from …
On intimacy. A preview of Stephen Taylor’s exhibition at the ASD Gallery
In a seminal work on the physical and imaginary functions of the skin (Le moi-peau, 1985), French psychologist Didier Anzieu suggested that Western thought is deceived by the idea that appearances, the outer limit of things, conceal an essence within. In physics, this is documented by our obsession with ever smaller units of matter. Similarly, in philosophy and psychology the process of peeling away layer after layer of false appearances in order to arrive at a deeper truth is the ultimate metaphor of gaining knowledge. But if we look at the human body …
Real Time 2007–2011
Faculty of Architecture and Spatial Design
London Metropolitan University
