CONTINUITY IN ARCHITECTURE

The B.Arch. studio presentations are being held on 22 September 2009. If you would like a preview/reminder of the CiA studio proposal go to THIS LINK

Sally Stone and Eamonn Canniffe are currently participating in a joint architecture/archaeology workshop with schools of architecture from IUAV, Barcelona and Palermo. If you are interested in their architectural and gastronomic adventures, you can follow their Twitter feeds:

Sally Stone Eamonn Canniffe

This short film documents a study of the mediation between urban and interior space, historic fabric and the contemporary city. This research through design was produced by Year 5 students in Continuity in Architecture, and was intended to remember, to reveal and to construct. Adjacent to Piazza Duomo, the locus of the exploration, the fourteen bays of the loggia of the Broletto, presents an ambiguous but potent site. Raised from street level, but open to the public realm, it is a civic memorial to the dead of the resistance as well as a survival of Milan’s medieval commerce. In a heavily constrained response to this context, the students created a new narrative for the site, using their theoretical narrative for an interpretative project within the protected urban environment of central Milan. They proposed ephemeral structures to embody their speculative positions, and judged how their intervention will lead to a new reading of the historic civic realm. Each student specified the issue for which they designed a temporary pavilion, including spaces and surfaces for storage and display, for the dissemination of information and advertising, but above all for the re – reading of the city.

Continuity in Architecture’s academic year draws to a close with the submission of final projects and this final film record of Year 5’s MOdAM proposals for a Museum and School of Fashion. In the next academic year students will embark on their own thesis design projects in Milan.

Continuity in Architecture Year 5 studio projects for a Museum and School of Fashion in Milan, an element of the Citta della Moda masterplan. This film shows excerpts from the students’ research work with the design projects to follow shortly.

As Jack Frost nips at the gangrenous toes of 2006 the Fifth Floor
window dressers turn to thoughts of Christmas presents…

The New Yorker magazine last week contained a very interesting review of an exhibition that has just opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture celebrates the “increasingly fruitful dialogue” between architecture and fashion. The article lists all the old favourites as contributing: Bernard Tschumi, Toyo Ito, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry to name but a very few. The exhibition compares each (with some credulity from the reviewer, Judith Thurman) with particular fashion designers, Yeohlee Teng, Tess Giberson, Victor & Rolf and Martin Margiela respectively. Thurman makes the point that although architects have complained about the exhibition, it serves fashion designers well, but she is unconvinced, declaring: “The disparities between fashion and architecture are, if anything, heightened by proximity”

I’ve seen the catalogue (it is available in Manchester) and it is a beautiful book with a lovely perforated cover and lots of coloured photographs of buildings and frocks.

Link to the original article at newyorker.com

Click here for pictures of the CiA Year 5 study trip to Milan.

The second shop window by Year 5 is open for viewing on the Fifth Floor of Chatham Building, and what a delight it is that it is free of seasonal commerciality. Themed around the recent field trip to Milan, its interactive elements keep the ardent viewer fully informed on the mighty Kaka.

Vanessa Friedman in Saturday’s Financial Times (11/12.11.06) discusses the universal language of fashion. She describes a party that she attended in Tokyo and says that “even though I couldn’t understand a word that was being said at the party, I thought I spoke the language.”

Read the whole article

Continuity in Architecture students present he first in a series of
shop windows for CITY - ARCHITECTURE - FASHION. Watch this space…

Contextual reading: John Foot Milan After the Miracle: City, Culture and Identity Berg Oxford and New York 2001

The studio introduction will take place in room 502 10.00am Thursday 28
September

Dressings: Loos and Architectural Tailoring. Talk by Eamonn Canniffe.

Bibliography

Massimo Cacciari, Architecture and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of Contemporary Architecture, Yale University Press New Haven 1993

Beatriz Colomina, łThe Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism in Colomina (ed) Space and Sexuality Princeton Papers on Architecture Vol.1
Princeton New Jersey 1992

Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, M.I.T. Press Cambridge Massachusetts 1994

Kenneth Frampton, The Architecture of Adolf Loos, Arts Council of Great Britain London 1985

Hélčne Furján, “Dressing down: Adolf Loos and the politics of ornament” The Journal of Architecture, Volume 8, Number 1 / March, 2003

Benedetto Gravagnuolo, Adolf Loos: Theory and Works, Art Data: Idea Books Edizioni Milan 1982

Adolf Loos, Spoken into the Void: Collected Essays 1897-1900 Opposition Books M.I.T. Press Cambridge Massachusetts 1982

Jules Lubbock, “Adolf Loos and the English Dandy” Architectural Review 1983

Mary McLeod łUndressing Architecture: Gender, Fashion and Modernity in Fausch, Singley, El-Khoury, and Efrat, Zvi Architecture: In Fashion
Princeton Architectural Press New York 1994

Ludwig Munz and Gustav Kunstler, Adolf Loos: Pioneer of Modern Architecture, Thames and Hudson London 1966

Hans Richter, Dada Art and Anti-Art, Thames and Hudson London 1965

Max Risselada (ed), Raumplan versus Plan Libre, Rizzoli New York 1989

Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture, Cambridge University Press Cambridge 1981

Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture, M.I.T. Press Cambridge Massachusetts 1995

BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE 2006/2007
MILAN: ON WITH THE MOTLEY…

The relationship between forms of architecture and modes of dress has been
theorised by the likes of Gottfried Semper, Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos since
the middle of the nineteenth century. As the world capital of the fashion
industry, the contemporary architectural scene in Milan is emerging from a
long period of apparent stagnation with the completion of Massimiliano
Fuksas’s Nuovo Polo Fiera and the construction of Grafton Architects Bocconi
University building. While the city assimilates these new interventions it
therefore seems an appropriate point to consider the concepts of beauty and
utility within Milanese design culture, and specifically the discipline of
fashion,through exploring the creation of objects, architecture and the
city. Situated in a richly layered environment, but one which is not
constrained by history, the proposed projects firstly aim to present an
opportunity to analyse the development of the present urban situation.
Secondly they will develop proposals for a variety of sites in Milan as
communicative and representational urban environments. Lastly, it is
intended that the balance between analysis and creative proposal will ensure
an interpretative framework for an architecture which is adept at dealing
with both the concrete and the speculative [Click here to read more…]