The Architectural Association Diploma Honours Reviewed _ Thinkpiece _ Architectural Review

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12/30/2015 The Architectural Association Diploma Honours Reviewed | Thinkpiece | Architectural Review

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The Architectural Association Diploma Honours

Reviewed17 January, 2015

The 2014 Diploma Honours, highest award bestowed on AA graduating students,showcase a wide spectrum of projects and unveil very distinct visions for thefuture of architecture


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If Corbusier believed architecture could be revolutionised in five points, that aspiration is

shared by the Architectural Associations new publication celebrating its top five

graduating students of 2014. The moniker of diploma honours (also the eponymous title

of this slim volume) is awarded to just a few students each year, for what the AA

considers its finest projects. It is a shame that so few other schools of architecture dont

have similar awards not just because honours showcases the general abilities

and interests of the graduating year, but because the accolade is a strong statementabout what the school itself believes is the future of architecture (both pedagogically and

practically). The question is: what can we learn from these five works individually, each

one with such a distinct vision for architecture? And what do they tell us collectively

about one schools changing ideologies?

The spectrum is broad. At one end, a high-tech landscape and two performances

(addressing globalisation in very different ways) this is architecture-as-technology, as

infrastructural space, as speculation, as exchange. And at the other end of the spectrum,

there is a modest communal housing block and a small gallery what might be called

architecture-as-tectonics (the production of space and arrangement of spatial elements).

Ioana Giurgius SMFoF: Uncovering the Factory in Natureis a post-industrial, post-

agrarian salt marsh factory of the future eliminating waste in the production process by

closing material loops. This interpretation of the factory is in reality a highly controlled

ecosystem, harnessing biological processes to blend ecology extracting a variety of

products, from drinking water to phosphate, and organic fertilisers to pharmaceutical

ingredients.

Giurgius project shares its hybridised natural-synthetic processes with Harry Kays

Jingju-on-Sea, but here the similarity ends. Kays Peking Opera performs the act of

consumerism on a planetary scale, mirrors the trajectories of rare earth mineralsextracted from China and brought to the Thames estuary. Here, in the final act of the

opera, earth is thrown into the river in volumes reflecting global supply and demand,

eventually building a new island. Kays progressive revelation of invisible forces

underpinning the global political economic complex is subtle and compelling. The

imagination and scepticism of the project are in a way typical of the unit, tutored by Liam

Young and Kate Davies while also marking an extreme advance for the way we think

about what constitutes architecture.

The petty mechanisms of global society are also key to Vere van Gools Dear London, a

study for an atomised Dutch embassy parasitically occupying existing structures.Situated in Nine Elms and adjacent to Battersea Power Station, the project wrestles

against the laser beam of gentrification and redevelopment that roves around the capital.

Van Gool proposes not only a new urban model of sovereignty, but also an alternative

(or parallel) system of ownership one replacing rental, built and prospective value with

use-value: to rent a house is to sub-own a house to stand on a street is to sub-own the

street. It suggests a form of spatial occupation in the city neither public nor private, and

the subtleties of the indeterminacy are thought-provoking.


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Axonometric from the Dear London project, by Vere van Gool

This project is excellently composed. In general, however, I must admit I struggle to

grasp the modus operandi of this studio (Diploma 10, run by Carlos Villanueva Brandt).

When there is true genius in their spatial interventions it is often lost in the exaggerated

complexity of their trademark CAD style (blinding wireframe neon lines ad absurdum).

While their immersive autobiographical adventures are intended as urban drivesembedding the student in a foreign social context, they often flirt with prejudice,

classism, condescending social profiling or outright navet of the conditions they were

attempting to document. The exceptional skill of Vere van Gool has escaped these

pitfalls, and her project is both thoroughly engaging and excellently informed.

In the second category, concerning more material architecture, Summer Islams Objects

of Nostalgiais a whimsical proposal to extend the British Museum with a new solid

concrete gallery one formed by negative casting a Bloomsbury terrace row, and then

carefully removing all the internal elements. There is a conceptual twist: the space

displays the 99 per cent of the BMs artefacts currently in storage, while the storage

becomes home to the preserved architectural elements of the demolished terracehouses. The resulting space is a ghost of the domestic, a windowless, blank facade

concealing the curious objetswithin. Islams extensive physical modelling documents a

skilful, almost artisanal, sensitivity to the fundamentals of architecture. Her refined

drawing style and careful engagement with history and memory has produced a truly

beautiful project, something between a Rachel Whiteread cast and a modern-day Soane

Museum.

One project stands apart from the others, and that is Eugnie Bliahs Socks: Collective

Living for the Japanese Housewife(executed under the tutelage of Maria Giudici and

Pier Vittorio Aureli). The architecture itself is modest and familiar four private housesfor young families arranged in a cross around a core containing semi-public

programmes. Each home is autonomous, making the communal spaces (a four-way

kitchen being the most important) the site for the sharing of labour. Indeed, the title for

the project comes from a quote about a wife always knowing which drawer her

husbands socks are kept in. It is this affective labour, or unpaid and economically

unrecognised work (like that of the Japanese housewife) that the architecture resists.

Bliah successfully distils complex theories of labour, gender and social relations into a

precise architecture that is at once political, pragmatic and poetic. The elegance of this

translation is truly remarkable there is almost nothing harder than designing spaces that

operate as planned without explanation or excuse. Socksavoids the blunt metaphors

frequently seen in projects dealing with sensationalist identity politics. The possibility of

sharing meals or laundry does not presume the housewife as an exploited underclass.

Fathers can cook too. Bliah clearly understands that in housing, there can be no

metaphors.


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Degrees of communal living, from Socks by Eugnie Bliah


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What results is a powerful statement about the role of the architect, as well as the ability

of space to shape behaviour. Socksrestores the Modernist ideal of the architect as a

major agent of social change. However, unlike an architect like Corbusier who

believed this was best done through large-scale technological modernisation Bliah is

directly influencing social power relations in an extremely localised (and therefore

effective) manner.

This position, while refreshing, could be read as exemplar of a promising new direction

in contemporary design (particularly among a younger generation of graduates). This

direction is one that points to a radical reappraisal of the fundamental relationship

between politics and architecture (see Jacques Duroys report on the Architecture

Exchange event). We should be clear, this is not so much the politicisation

of architecture, as it is the reformulation of political ambitions for social equality through

the lens of architecture (the difference is subtle but important). Further, architecture that

does not abstract its subjects, but begins from a rigorous investigation of their very real

conditions, offers the most hope of avoiding that Modernist pitfall of over-simplification of

its users.

Diploma Honours

Publisher:AA Publications

Price:10
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The Architectural Association Diploma Honours Reviewed _ Thinkpiece _ Architectural Review

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