mis–architecture mis-architecture.co.uk

AA Inte rmedia te Uni t 9 2007/08

Dr Chris topher Pierce | Chris Matthews

UNIT SYNOPSIS (1–6)

1 rationale

The objective of Unit 9 is for students to carry out an

intensive and creative year long drawing process, the

result of which is to invent new architectural and urban

approaches to redundancy.

We use the production of drawings to generate ideas

and speculative images for architecture. The studio

articulates a method for the development of creative

practice by prioritizing the role and nature of the

drawing as the principal means of production and

communication of the architect. Our method stems

from the common surrealist technique of placing the

‘unusual’ in the ‘usual’. The studio repeatedly mis-

reads, mis-scales, mis-shapes and generally highlights

any other mis-demeanours involved in the making of

drawings and their presentation.

Two parallel techniques inform the studio’s working

methodology – one of fictive readings, like those an art

historian constructs from drawings, and another that

utilizes a method of editing and process drawing from

architectural practice. These work together to challenge

and, at the same time, motivate and inform the

architect’s drawing process. In all stages of a project,

the drawings are expected to maintain a state-of-

flux/indeterminacy. In this way, the work is constantly

open to mis-interpretation and redirection. One

consequence of this method is that a project’s

function/programme/use is not prescribed but invented,

and the taxonomy of building types is constantly

renewed and expanded.

The resulting work is inventive, acutely attuned to

contemporary urban and architectural issues, and

poses key questions of how design is approached. The

drawings are the driver/generator for the design, and

also the studio’s key parameter in terms of medium.

The dictionary of mis-architecture includes: mis-

building, mis-shaping, mis-scaling, mis-reading, mis-

constructing, mis-demeanours . . .

DRAWING CATEGORIES (a–g)

a found objects

1.0

2.0

b interference combinations

3.0

4.0

5.0

2

2 general theme/brief

Architecture of redundancy – The unit will be looking at

the city through a stretched time frame and revealing

the redundancies latent within the contemporary urban

fabric. Each group will be applying their ‘base drawing’

to the city’s various redundant conditions and

presenting these as connecting surfaces. At one level

the surfaces could be considered as simple urban

parks/landscapes constructed through surface and

patterns, or at another as three-dimensional surfaces

that connect and make an architecture through

redundancy. There is a push in London to look at parks

within the city, especially urban parks. Barcelona has

many examples completed in the early 90s and more

recently, including FOA’s coastal park project.

We are asking students not to think of an architecture

and then draw, but to develop an architecture through

the process of making drawings. The project’s function

and brief are developed through the technique of ‘fictive

readings’ of drawings.

Likewise, technology is a found object(s). The studio’s

approach to building technologies is developed by

reading and mis-reading drawings. In other words,

students are expected to apply/modify known

technologies to create new, unexpected applications. It

is through the frame of the ‘base drawing’ and the

tactics of mis-architecture that the unit combines an

architect's broad vision and an artisan's narrow focus

to formulate the composition of new materials while

simultaneously exploring their broader applications in

building and design. Technologies are frequently

borrowed from outside the field of architecture and

placed in ‘alien’ or ‘unusual’ conditions. References in

the last few years have come from the shipping,

automobile, and aviation industries, among others.

3 ground rules

– Group work

– Weekly drawings diary

– No reading

– No physical models

– High-quality printed drawings

4 outline timetable

There is a formal presentation of drawings each week

along with the submission of a bound drawings diary

incorporating all of the week’s output.

The drawing programme is divided into two halves –

production and editing – and incorporates four distinct

phases – drawing, siting, construction and

c base drawings

6.0

7.0

8.0

9.0

d 3d drawings

10.0

11.0

3

presentation.

The starting point is something non-architectural. The

only requirement is that the ‘found/imported object’ is

from another profession whose primary means of

communication is drawing – eg hydrography – and

involves some of the nomenclature associated with

architectural drawings. Two or more ‘found’ scientific

drawings/diagrams are combined, in a six-week

drawing exercise, by making overlays and combinations

of information, patterns, interferences and

transparencies with the sole pursuit of creating a

beautiful 2D image with 3D qualities – what is termed

the ‘base drawing’ (see adjacent images 1.0–9.0). The

‘base drawing’ is the ‘unusual’ object. Once this

drawing is established it is sited and made three-

dimensional. At this stage the limits are still ‘what looks

good’, with the normal concerns of architecture put to

the background.

Subsequent stages of the design programme involve all

of the techniques of mis-architecture. In the process,

students are encouraged to push ideas to their

extreme: known aspects of architecture are mis-used,

mis-represented and mis-understood, and unknown

aspects are invented.

autumn term 07/08

PHASE I: 2D DRAWING Images 1.0–9.0

Collect original drawings from:

– Hydrographers drawings/charts of rivers/seas/lakes

– 16th century engineers drawings of ship hulls and

bridges

1.0 Present the originals

2.0 Make transparent copies

3.0 Combine both drawings and create new patterns

through interference

PHASE II: 3D DRAWING Images 10.0–12.0

Mis-construct your ‘base drawing’ into the following:

1.0 Worm’s-eye view

2.0 Reflected ceiling plan

3.0 Down view

PHASE III: CLASSIFICATIONS W/IN BASE DRAWING –

Images 13.0–14.0

Introduction of data

1.0 Collect three competition briefs – London,

Barcelona + any other

2.0 By mis-appropriation translate the information and

data from the competition briefs and form its own brief

through assimilation with the ‘base drawing’.

12.0

e classification within the base drawing

13.0

14.0

4

spring term 07/08

PHASE IV: EXHIBITION + WORKSHOP

Barcelona – study of recently completed parks and

waterfront surfaces. Reviews and workshop at the

Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona

(ETSAB)

PHASE V: SITING Images 15.0–19.0

PHASE VI: CONSTRUCTING Image 23.0

summer term 07/08

PHASE VII: PRESENTING Images 20.0–23.0

5 selected imageography

– Aaron Betsky, Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures

of Diller + Scofidio (New York: Whitney Museum of

American Art, 2003)

– André Breton, Drawings

– Peter Buchanan, et al., The Architecture of Enric

Miralles And Carme Pinos (Lumen Press, Inc., 1990)

– Peter Cook and Colin Fournier, Kunsthaus Graz

(2001-2003), Graz, Austria

– Creative Review (Monthly publication covering the

communication arts)

– Shin Egashira, The English House (AA Files 23), pp.

39-43 + Fish Project

– Max Ernst, Paintings and Drawings

– Robin Evans, Translations from Drawing to Building

and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,

1997)

– Tomoko, Sakamoto, ed., The Yokohama Project

[Foreign Office Architects] (Actar Editorial, 2003)

– Herzog & de Meuron, 1998/2002: The Nature of

Artifice (El Croquis 109/110, 2003)

– Toyo Ito, Sendai Mediatheque (1997-2000), Sedai-

shi,Miyagi, Japan

– Rem Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL (New York: The Monacelli

Press, 1995)

– George Liaropoulos-Legendre, ijp: The Book of

Surfaces (London: AA Publications, 2003)

– Daniel Libeskind, Chamber Works: Architectural

Meditations on Themes from Heraclitus (London:

Architectural Association, 1983)

– Robert Maxwell, “Truth Without Rhetoric: The New

Softly Smiling Face of Our Discipline” (AA Files 28)

– Enric Miralles (El Croquis 72 [II], 1995)

– Peter Cook, ed., Morphosis: Buildings and Projects

(New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1990)

– Thom Mayne, Morphosis (London: Phaidon Press,

2002)

f siting

15.0

16.0

17.0

18.0

19.0

g presenting – unwrapped elevations, exploded isometrics . . .

20.0

21.0

5

– MVRDV, 1997/2002: Redefining the Tools of

Radicalism (El Croquis 111, 2003)

– NO. MAD + CERO.9 + ÁBALOS & HERREROS (El

Croquis 118, 2004)

– Cedric Price, Cedric Price: The Square Book (London:

Wiley Publishers, 2003)

– Paul Moorhouse, Bridget Riley (London: Tate, 2003)

– Minke Themans, Berweg: New Notational Systems for

Urban Situations (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2000)

– Vitruvius, Les dix livres d’architecture de Vitruve, 2nd

rev. ed., ed. and tr. M. Perrault (Paris: Jean Baptiste

Coignard, 1684)

– Mike Webb, Temple Island (London: Architectural

Association, 1987)

– Peter L. Wilson, Bridgebuildings and the Shipshape

(London: Architectural Association, 1984)

6 biographies

Christopher Pierce studied at Virginia Polytechnic

Institute and State University and gained a PhD from

the University of Edinburgh. He has worked as an

architect in Architecture Intermundium (Daniel

Libeskind) and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and as an

academic in five British universities – Brighton,

Westminster, Reading, Liverpool and Edinburgh. He

recently published ‘From Bauhaus to Our House to

Koolhaas: The Office for Metropolitan Architecture

(OMA) and Modern American Culture’ in Going Dutch:

The Dutch Presence in America 1609-2009 (Brill, 2007),

and with the Dutch architectural photographer Iwan

Baan he is completing an essay on Diller Scofidio +

Renfro. He is a regular lecturer and critic at universities

throughout Europe and the USA and formed Mis-

Architecture with Chris Matthews in 2000.

Christopher Matthews, principal of Pastina Matthews

Architects (http://www.pastinamatthews.co.uk/), was

educated by Peter Cook at the Bartlett School of

Architecture. For nearly a decade he worked with

James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates on

projects including the Singapore Arts Centre, the Lowry

Centre and No 1 Poultry before setting up his own

practice in 2000. He has previously taught at

Westminster, Liverpool and Brighton.

22.0

23.0