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Spaces examines cross-disciplinary strategies
of making and of representation. What happens when the material
and syntactical specificities of different sites and spatial
orders are crossed or conflated with those of other disciplines?
How does relocating work in different media impact meaning, communication
and subjectivity? What kinds of spaces result from this shift
and how is such work received and experienced? These are some
of the questions to be addressed by this series of papers seeking
to navigate interstitial contemporary research practices |
| Thursday, 17th November 2005 |
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round
table discussion
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workshop B
10.00 - 13.00
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round table discussion
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Prof. Jonathan Hill (Bartlett) and Dr. Penny Florence
(Slade) will introduce the following Paper Session.
Chair: Prof. Hill
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| 14.00 - 14.30 |
KATIE
LLOYD THOMAS, University of East London
“Building While Being In It: Notes on drawing ‘otherhow’”
Rachel Blau duPlessis suggests that feminist practice needs to work not with ‘”otherness” as
in a binary system, but ‘otherhow’ as the multiple possibilities
of praxis.’ [1] I will explore ‘otherness’ and ‘otherhow’ in
relation to my own work with the architectural drawing.
Lately, as collaborator in artist Brigid McLeer’s ongoing project In Place
of the Page, based in a series of translations from text to graphic to architectural
drawing, I have been making drawings as ‘an architect’ again.
Previously, my theoretical research had identified problematic aspects of the
architectural drawing from a feminist perspective – orthography’s
use of an ideal line or its power to appear objective, a-social and a-historical – and
searched out examples of drawing which could reverse these. Such a strategy stays
within a binary construct. The ‘other’ drawing is defined negatively
in the terms of the dominant drawings. In ‘Enfleshings: the word is (the
line is) material’ I trace how one theme from the theoretical work – orthography’s
attention to rigid boundaries - manifests itself (indirectly) in the drawn project.
To my surprise, given a chance to explore drawing free from practical constraints,
I chose to adhere to the rules of my discipline. Nevertheless, my new drawing
process produces strange animals. It is liberating, open-ended, loves to be determined
by external factors and can produce multiple outcomes. But to what extent can
it be claimed as feminist practice? In ‘Waiting and Copying: desiring (the
work of) the other’ I trace this new theme which emerges from the processes
of the project, and attempt to place it within feminist discourse. Ways of working ‘otherhow’ can
escape the straitjacket of being for or against, to produce unknown outcomes
which can exceed these oppositions.
[1] Blau DuPlessis, Rachel Otherhow in The Pink Guitar: Writing as feminist practice
London: Routledge 1990 p.154 |
| 14.30 - 15.00 |
VICTORIA
WATSON, The Invisible University
“Transition Spaces & Dreamy Disorientation: Electric Light,
Lakeshore Drive and Lattice Structures of Colorful Embroidery Thread”
What could be a more intriguing agent of cross-disciplinary
strategies of making and representation than the grid?
As a practical tool of making the grid enjoys, not so much a
history, as an endurance – it must be one of the most memorable
and most useful formats for the organization of structures, whether
these are paintings, buildings, drawings, animation or systems
of information. More specifically, throughout the 20th and indeed
into the 21st century, the grid has operated as an absorbing
subject of representation for researchers in the fields of architecture
and art.
My own research began with a fascination for the grids locked
into the work of the architect Mies van der Rohe but rapidly
developed into a fascination with grids of another kind; these
being light-weight lattice structures, formed at approximately
the size of the human torso and made from colorful embroidery
thread, sewn into a foam-board support. Although these colorful
structures are conceptually simple, in their material manifestation
what is simple is nowhere to be seen. Sometimes the grids will
appear to condense a cloud of electromagnetic plasma, at other
times to vibrate, as if an invisible force is acting upon the
fibres of which they are made, switching from on to off.
Between the architectural grids of Mies and the soft grids of
my own making there is a vast transitional space – possibly
even a void!
In this paper, which will be in the order of 2,400 words, I would
like to explore the interstitial space between Mies’ grids
and my own. My aim in doing so is threefold, first to see if
I can, second to see what it is like and third to contribute
to the more general discussion on the nature of transitional
spaces.
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| 15.00 - 15.30 |
JONAS
RUNBERGER, Krets design research group
[in affiliation to AKAD, KTH School
of Architecture, Stockholm, Sweden]
“Remediation as operation and strategy within architectural
design development”
This paper will dwell on the notion of remediation
in relation to collaborative spaces of design development and
production within the Krets research group. The term implies
the transformation of a material by shift of media, in which
some characteristics native to the former remains in the later.
The authors will use collaborative projects developed within
Krets to investigate these issues in regards to collaborative
design and architectural production. The paper will most specifically
focus on the recent PARCEL project, presently materialized in
the form of a reactive wall panelling system.
PARCEL emanated from an interest in the temporal aspects of disposable
articles and printing matter, and how they could be applied at
an architectural scale. A system of partially folded sheets with
specific curvatures and sets of folds was developed through prototypes,
in which the structural logics suggested a vertical positioning,
refined into a wall panelling system. Printed circuits and the
cellular intelligence of programmed micro-controllers were added
to form a reactive environment.
The development of PARCEL was carried out in different media,
including folded physical models, digital geometries, conductive
paint, tape and glue, electronic networks and programmed micro-controllers.
The shift between these media can be regarded as multiple operations
of remediation. It resulted in striated structural and organizational
logics visible in the fully operational prototype, and required
a continuous negotiation between members of the design team as
well as between the different media involved. Furthermore, one
single pattern provides instructions for punching and folding
plastic, printing electrical conductors and the positioning of
electronic components. The drawing is thereby transformed into
instructions applied to a range of materials, with the same organizational
logic but with a differentiated set of operations.
Notes: 'Remediation' is here used in the sense defined by David
Jay Bolter, and Richard Grusin and further developed by, N. Katherine
Hayles: David Jay and Grusin, Richard, Remediation: Understanding
New Media, The MIT Press, 2000. Hayles, N. Katherine, Writing
Machines, MIT Press Mediawork Pamphlet Series, 2002.
Full PARCEL description at www.runberger.net/research_4.htm
PARCEL was developed during 2004 by Krets members Pablo Miranda,
Daniel Norell and Jonas Runberger.
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| 15.30 - 16.00 |
ANA ARAUJO,
Bartlett, UCL
“Lacescapes”
Lace is commonly associated with fetishism, sensuality,
frivolity. As in the trimmings of lingerie. But also with delicacy,
fragility, grace. As in baptism robes, lace curtains, in the grandma's
table spread, in scaled down domestic accessories... Lace signifies
femininity, a fabrication worked and worn by women.
Architecture started with the weaving together of the branches of a tree, Gottfried
Semper said. As lacemaking.
However, lace in architecture has too often been confined to the interior...
the construction of domesticity and the domestication of the feminine... an
aesthetics of propriety and containment.
But then there are these emerging (improper) associations of lace with the
trimmings of 'lingerie' . And suddenly lace comes to the borderline.
However, in architecture, lace has too often been ridiculed as an excess. An
improper layer of soft decoration unnecessarily added over the solid foundations
of architectural structure, an undesired trace of a self (a woman, always)
interfering in the lines of pristine preconceived design.
Lace is fabric(ation). So is architecture, an interlacing of walls, volumes,
textures, experiences.
Making lace is always already (re)making. A cyclical movement of twisting and
untwisting, constructing and (re)constructing. Repetition, reproduction, patterning.
An endless process. A complicated practice of purposelessness?
The paper will examine the repetitive practice of lacemaking, in search for
a poetics of patterning: one that will implicate looping, reproduction, recurrence,
layering – different, though repetitive instances of repetition. If,
on the one hand, patterning seems in many ways incompatible with the fabricating
processes of architecture, on the other, it very much resembles the logic of
the scape – a practice of (re)arrangement and layering. Lacescapes hopes
to facilitate an architectural engagement with the poetics of patterning, in
text as well as in design – from originality to reproduction, from singularity
to repetition. And from solidity to delicacy.
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| 16.00 - 16.30 |
discussion |
| 16.30 |
bar |
Evening Event
17.00 - 20.00 |
private view: Research Spaces
EXHIBITION
introductions by Dr. Penny Florence (Slade) and Dr. Jane Rendell
(Bartlett)
with special guest speakers:
(18:00 - 19:30:)
Phyllida Barlow
16* makers
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