CONTINUITY IN ARCHITECTURE

The 10 CiA students (with staff members Sally Stone and Eamonn Canniffe) participating in the international workshop at IUAV in Venice have had a busy first week. A briefing day was followed by two days of fieldtrips to significant archaeological sites and the project sites at Caldonazzo, Riva del Garda and Concordia Sagitarria. International design teams were formed with the other students from Barcelona, Catania and Venice and the projects will be presented in exhibition to a prestigious jury next week. The workshop’s homepage can be visited at THIS LINK…

The August issue of ‘Blueprint’ magazine features 50 of the Best UK Design Graduates, two of them, Sophie Corkhill and Matthew Duggan, being from the ‘Continuity in Architecture: The City, the Building, the Room’ group. The projects were intended to complement the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza in celebration of the quincentenary of Palladio’s birth. Sophie’s and Matthew’s work was selected by Nick Johnson who praised it in the following terms.

SOPHIE CORKHILL
A bold, brave plan wrapping inventively around the Palladio building. A ’stealth’ building - as much ‘this year’ as the barcode facade was last, and the sloping roofscape before it - seems to work and be an appropriate and articulate response. A believable and convincing plan with a bold yet sensitive rendering.

MATTHEW DUGGAN
In a world of architecture obsessed by itself and the veneer of stylistic appeal, this student started from a fundamentally different point of view, concentrating on the ‘feel’ of the space rather than the look. The light into, and the view out of, the space is fundamental. An antidote to so many students intent on stylistic rather than human responses to creating space.

Immagini e memoria: Rome in the photographs of Father Peter Paul Mackey 1890-01

Sir John Soane’s Museum is hosting an exhibition from the photographic archive of the British School at Rome of the work of Fr. Peter Paul Mackey O.P., which presents a record of thecity undergoing rapid modernisation at the end of the nineteenth century. The expansion of the city and its new infrastructure horrified romantic artists in pursuit of a very late Grand Tour, but yielded vast amounts of new material for increasingly professionalised archaeologists. The tension between these two worlds, the simultaneous need to record and the desire to compose, are evident in many of the photographs, the ancient monuments seen against modern factories and before the maturing of present-day urban planting.

In his excellent catalogue essay Dr. Robert Coates-Stephens (Cary Fellow at the BSR) places the Dominican scholar Mackey’s images in their historical context of ‘Roma Capitale’, and the social context of the expatriate community of clerics, archaeologists and aesthetes, a society in which the word amateur still had its original meaning. The atmospherically staged exhibition continues at the Soane Museum until 12 September.

At present CiA staffer Eamonn Canniffe is researching a similar complementary collection of material, that of Captain J. Douglas Kennedy, held at the John Rylands Library in Manchester. The collection presents a haphazard but enthusiastic account of the same dilettante milieu.

It is hard to put in words the effect of this extraordinary intervention by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa at The Serpentine Gallery in London (until 18 October). A sinuous silhouette characterises the slender reflective roof suspended on tentative mirrored columns above a simple screeded floor. Those are the bare facts.

But the impact of these simple gestures are magical. The rhyming of columns and trees is a commonplace of organic design but is here given literal depth with the doubling of the column height through reflection. The depth of the visual field collapses through the folding in on themselves of covered and uncovered spaces. The implicit gravity of light from the sky is brought into doubt, as it is revealed to be a reflection from the ground. And just momentarily one experiences a figure ground reversal, when a solid leaden summer sky contrasts with the light and space seen on highly polished surface.

For a different view of another work by SANAA, their NewMuseum of Contemporary Art in New York see this film by recent MSA graduates.

Jeremy Deller’s Procession, Manchester, 5 July 2009

While the commissioning of an art event might not have the authentic resonance of a traditional urban ritual (such as the Roman Triumph, or Holy Week in Seville), this populist production for the Manchester International Festival had much to gladden the jaded urbanist’s heart. It had a Roman road, Deansgate, to process along between the castrum origins and the later medieval core. It had an eager and appreciative crowd gathered along the route. And it had a series of familiar and unfamiliar sections evoking some mythic scenarios.

The Rose Queens of Manchester’s largely defunct Whit Walks traditions were joined by a robust outing from The Ramblers. The all-singing, all-dancing, mock-baroque of ‘The Adoration of the Chip’ contrasted with a fleet of hearses commemorating closed but legendary nightclubs, from The Hacienda to Rotters. The Big Issue Sellers and Unrepentant Smokers (followed by a sobering health warning) provided the smudge of ‘gritty northern realism’ but the procession concluded with the crowd gleefully following along Deansgate. The pied pipers were, alas, not the Shree Swaminarayan Gadi Pipe Band from Bolton, but the equally delightful Caribbean steel band Steel Harmony, sweetly syncopating the works of The Buzzcocks and Joy Division.

Perhaps the performance of Procession did not have the transcendent qualities of a great urban narrative reenactment, but it said more about the notions of civic pride and place than the banal receptacles of spectacular consumption which form Manchester’s recent cosmetically enhanced cityscape.

The post-event exhibition runs at Cornerhouse Manchester July 9 – 23 August.

From the School of Architecture at UCD:

Now

architects have time to think. architects are educated to solve problems and propose innovative solutions.
now what? is an initiative designed to tap into the wealth of creative talent amongst graduates and students who need space to research, learn new skills and people to discuss these with.

What

a series of multi-disciplinary public conversations; workshops; studio space and facilities available for research; publication of all work plus a public exhibtion at the end of the summer. The entire initiative is to operate as a think-tank, is free of charge and will be run on a voluntary basis.

LINK to now what?

The Art & Design Degree Show at Manchester Metropolitan University will run from Saturday 20 June to Sunday 28 June.

The graduating Bachelor of Architecture students of the College of Continuity in Architecture will be showing their work in Rooms 502 and 503 of the Chatham Building.

The Private View will take place at 6 pm on Friday 19 June, when the new MSA catalogue will be available.

Here is a film of the work of some of this year’s projects based in Vicenza.

Alvaro Siza - Quinta da Malagueira, Évora, Portugal (1977)

An edited extract from an interview conducted by Manchester School of Architecture doctoral candidate António Oliviera with the 2009 Royal Gold Medallist Alvaro Siza Vieira

AO: What were the principles underlying the Quinta da Malagueira project and what is the importance of vernacular architecture in this project?

AS: … Hidden in the centre of Malagueira there is a street, which was illegal construction in the 1940s. It is no accident that it is put in the very centre of the land where it could not be seen, to maintain the image. I must also point out that at that time, for example, levels of thermal insulation were notrequired; there was no regulation for that yet. So what moved the vernacular model of the courtyard house, which is not the only one in Alentejo, … is the one that is favourable to the budgetary restrictions and the creation of comfort, that is, the courtyard introduces a kind of transition; the climate in Alentejo is harsh, it is very hot and very cold, it also has large thermal variations, so that is an area of transition. The white paint, has also clearly to do with the environment of Évora, with the color of Évora, all white, …

AO: I find the Malagueira is a representative project almost of the Alentejo culture, I do not know if you agree with that?

AS: There are many reasons for each thing in architecture. I have also heard this sort of project being classified as neorationalist, for example, and of course nobody is working today without having the background, even if they deny it, of the evolution of architecture which is usually called rationalism. I do not think we can separate the reasons of architecture by this or that, I mean, there are many reasons combining, sometimes there is even the taste of the promoter, which is something that isn’t often mentioned, but which obviously has influence.

AO: I chose Malagueira for two reasons because on the one hand it has a very strong relationship with the place, with Évora, with the environment, with the ethos, and on the other hand it has almost a vision of the future, for example, because that one element that binds the whole, … I think these two aspects of relationship with the place, and demand for a relationship with the future are, in my view, essential.

AS: Yes, once again I agree, but there are several, but you mean the viaduct. One of the reasons for the viaduct, is really a relationship, it is no coincidence that under the viaduct there is a great pedestrian way and beside it there are cars, I do not like this thing pedestrians to one side, and cars to the other. By the way, in Évora when I got the job, the idea was to make some collective garages, and those narrow paths, between houses, were pedestrian, also because lots of cars was unthinkable in Malagueira, because that was really meant for poor people, and a quick change was not expected, which was a mistake to predict. But what is a fact is that it started, more cars began to appear, more cars, …and people created a very interesting rule, that in front of every house, there is an eight-meter stop for the owner and nobody else, and going along well with this rule, no one violating this rule, then the streets are too narrow for the cars, but there too, as there are no sidewalks, there are no accidents because the car driver cannot accelerate like a Formula 1, he has to drive slowly because otherwise he will scratch the car, hurt people … Oh the viaduct, the viaduct, well, about my saying that there is a parallel between cars and pedestrians, one of the reasons for the viaduct is that I knew from the start that there would be no money for infrastructure.

AO: The very simplicity of the materials of the viaduct?

AS: Out of the same rule not to bury drains, … a network gallery could be made and kill two birds with one stone, introducing a new scale waiting for the equipment, because as you know, there are distributed gaps in the plan, which are designed for equipment, a number of request of the town hall … Put simply no money ever came. What I could not imagine is that until now no money would come, and money still does not come.

AO: Architecture has such adversity outside architecture itself that…

AS: It is not always external, because sometimes it comes from professionals, obstruction by professionals themselves.

AO: The existential place has an important role in the outcome of your projects and works. Do you consider existentialism as thought important in the shape of architecture itself?

AS: Yes existentialism is something that is almost no longer spoken of, but it is not something that is gone, a thought that is not included in the way of thinking today, but I do not know what sense architecture is seeing, but what I find important in architecture, is the attention to how people live and how they want to live. The balance is always variable, ambiguous but it has always some lines of force, which we must try to understand, that is, one of the problems of architecture is the understanding of what is happening and what is happening is always persistence and innovation.

AO: Because the relationship with the site is part of sustainability?

AS: Yes, indeed, indeed…

AO: How do you see the future of architectural creation and its relationship with society.

AS: Well I see a black future, if the trend is to give major strength to every expertise, forgetting that journey I was talking about. If I am right, I may not be… (there is) the gap between the one who projects and the one who will be using the projected product. In all fields of architecture there are also new generations that are normally assimilating the huge increase of information that is coming, and (developing the) means to assimilate this information and I want to believe (in) that.

A recent visit to Portugal afforded the opportunity to look at three works from the long career of Alvaro Siza.

Boa Nova Tea House (Leça de Palmeira 1958-63)

This early work by Siza has survived a half-century without officious preservation. Its subtle relationship to its craggy site is matched by the delicacy of its organization and the robustness of its construction. The journey through the landscape continues in the inflection of the plan and nestling section. The influence of Japanese and Scandinavian architecture is manifested in the most Portuguese ways, particularly in the relationship to that alluring horizon glimpsed in a clerestory window as one pauses before descending to the principal rooms.

Faculty of Architecture (Porto 1987-93)

The Faculty of Architecture displays those same narrative qualities applied to an urban scale. Its panoramic location helps Siza frame views of the city and the River Duoro. The individual articulation of the studio blocks are supported by the plaza / podium and administrative wings which line the ascending journey through the building, by linear and curving ramps to the repository of architectural knowledge in the library.

Serralves Foundation (Porto 1995-99)

Again responding to the qualities of its situation, this Museum sits in a beautifully maintained park with views framed from the windows of its generously proportioned galleries. The sober monumentalism of its minimal detailing creates a sequence of abstract vistas that lead the visitor toward the spaces for contemporary art, and out into the garden. Here the white volumes stand as mute counterparts to the varied forms of a nature educated to be natural.

Despite the differences in scale and context of these three projects the element that gives them unity is the elaboration of the journey through the building, as if they are petrified traces of the linear drawings through which Siza represents the world.

More images available on Guttae

The landscape of urban desolation which New Islington still remains as we plumb the depths of the recession has been recently complemented by the unveiling of Will Alsop’s long awaited CHIPS apartment building. Uncannily similar to the computer simulation produced as part of the marketing campaign, the project constitutes one of the fingers of Alsop’s 2002 masterplan for the Urban Splash development in East Manchester. The brightly-coloured reveals, the super-graphics and the waterside location will perhaps distract the architectural tourist from the brittle quality of the building’s construction. The bus stops are in place to ferry residents, but seven years after inception one would still have to be a very optimistic pioneer to invest your hard-won mortgage in this key example of contemporary urban anomie.

The New Islington CHIPS promo

In an attempt to ameliorate an existing, historic and celebrated example of urban anomie (that’s enough anomie, Ed.) Urban Splash are also involved in Park Hill in Sheffield. A documentary about English Heritage’s role in the structure’s conservation will be screened on May 1 at 9.00pm on BBC2. Mayday! Mayday!

English Heritage on Park Hill

Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Institute of Contemporary Arts in Boston follows in the now venerable tradition of cultural regeneration projects, hoping to create its own New England version of the ‘Bilbao effect’. It is a taut essay in the creation of a waterside icon, with its dramatic cantilever and open auditorium facing across the bay. But the economic collapse in the U.S. suggests that it will remain surrounded by parking lots for several years to come, by which time the novelty of its angular forms might have paled.

That is for the future. What, I hear you ask, of those forms now? The building is sleekly realised, blind walled galleries propped up on the performance space that has the potential for a backdrop view over the water. A central glazed elevator (surely the only one in the world dedicated in honour of wealthy donors) connects the public spaces and galleries. The desire for flexibility in exhibition design creates rather banal and neutral galleries, the very uninterrupted size of which seem to contradict the place-making gestures of the ICA’s exterior. Not the least of these is the dropped section of the media gallery with its banks of computer monitors framed against the waves.

Linking temporary and permanent collection galleries there is a spectacular panoramic buffer zone at gallery level, which reveals a fundamental problem. The orientation of the building results in the framing of views towards the uninspiring buildings of Logan Airport, rather than the airport’s more dynamic runways or the crowded skyline provided by Boston’s irregular plan and successive waves of commercial development. This decision means that the building’s ambitions are more satisfyingly realised, not from its characterless interior, but from the exaggerated quality of the outside.

Call for Papers for a session at the First International Meeting of the European Architectural History Network, Guimaraes, Portugal, June 17-20, 2010.

The Figure in the Grotto: Materialisation and embodiment in the Renaissance

In renaissance Italy the garden represented a space of mediation between nature and culture. Within this liminal context the body appeared in a specific guise, figures ambiguously seen as both animated material emerging from nature, and conversely the petrifying figures of culture. The context of the garden, a very overt locus of private reverie, encouraged the experimentation with meaning through form that was deemed to have insufficient decorum for the public realm. Figures of the antique and mythical past were used to create a psychologically provocative setting for the indulging of fantasy away from the cares of ecclesiastical or civic office. In particular the appropriation of herms, half architectural element and half statue, as ambiguous figures in the populating of grottoes, were exploited as members to define, and even on occasion support, the other and originary world of the garden. Their presence provided literal embodiments that were invested with interpretative meaning. Constructed of marble, mosaic, tufa, and stucco the nymphaea spatialised the painted grotteschi uncovered in early archaeological explorations of ancient villa sites, with their phantasmagoric juxtapositions of architectural elements and mythical creatures. The scale transformation, from a fictive realm to an architectural one, inevitably involved a coarsening of the detail and the illusionistic exploration of material possibilities. The intellectual meaning expressed was therefore obscured by the immediacy of sensation and novelty, which served as a mask to the ancient ethos evoked through the form, decoration and location of such spaces. In such situations the human and the natural were treated as one phenomenon, tied into a corporeal expression that sought to make the intangible expressively apparent. They stand as manifestations of the mediating role of architecture as human intervention in, and vulnerability to, the elemental forces of nature.

Papers are invited which explore specific examples of the genre (such as the nymphaeum of Villa Giulia and the Casino of Pius IV in Rome, the Grotto of Buontalenti in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, or the nymphaeum of the Villa Barbaro at Maser) or which exploit the expressive range of architectural grotesques, as column, as pilaster, as sculpture and as decorative ornament, to define the space or figure the surface.

Send paper proposals to Eamonn Canniffe E.Canniffe@mmu.ac.uk
Manchester School of Architecture, Manchester Metropolitan University, Faculty of Art and Design,
Chatham Building, Cavendish Street, Manchester M15 6BR, United Kingdom. Tel +44 (0)161 247 6956 / Fax +44 (0)161 247 6810.

The full programme for all sessions is available at www.eahn.org