The editors of the Bartlett Think-Tank would like to express their support for the current UCL occupation opposing the cuts in education and rise in tuition fees. We agree that the present crisis in education calls for critical and open dialogue and that it is more than appropriate that it should manifest itself in the occupation of university space.

Please visit the occupation’s website and blog for more information and real-time updates:

http://ucloccupation.com/
http://ucloccupation.wordpress.com/

Or show your support by visiting the Jeremy Bentham Room at UCL:

http://ucloccupation.wordpress.com/find-us/

The Bartlett Think-Tank encourages comments and posts on the use of space as a form of constructive critique and the alternative ideas this can generate and promote.

Barking from Without was part of the 2010 Cities Methodologies exhibition and conference organised by the UCL Urban Lab. The exhibition took place at the Slade Research Centre on Woburn Square from 5 to 7 May 2010.

Barking from Without is an interactive installation presenting material from an ongoing case study of the new Barking Town Square in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Part of a broader research project on design in the contemporary public realm, the case study is supported primarily by participant-observer methods that draw as much on ethnographic fieldwork as on Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. The research is presented in the form of an open dialogue which visitors are encouraged to join by leaving written comments.

All material from the installation is posted on barking-assemblage.org under the category Barking from Without. Comments are still very much welcome! Please participate by sending your comments to comment@barking-assemblage.org

Art historian Giulio Carlo Argan formulated his famous sentence in the nineteen-seventies, when then the modernist grand narrative of “good design” had already long disintegrated, leaving something of a semantic vacuum in the designed object, an empty space that had been promptly occupied by a micro-narrative of immediate satisfaction by indiscriminate consumption. Looking at the ease with which designed objects can be used to carry extremely different meanings and values forces us to reflect on the communicative power of design and its information value. Forms generated by design represent a presence in space that doesn’t end in the fulfillment of its function, but continues in force of their mere existence, in their relationship with the rest of the environment.

“Critical minds: critical spaces” is a one-day symposium organized by a group of UCL research students gravitating around this blog, as Gabriele Oropallo and Wesley Albrecht. The event is conceived of as an occasion to look at the work of architects, planners and designers and its social and cultural relevance in stimulating awareness and criticism of the contemporary. Very often, at the heart of cultural production, there is a practice shaped by a rational or existential response to material, technical or cultural constraints. This practice generates products that are designed as tools to enable the rest of the community to critically understand and question messages, objects and environments, rather than taking them for granted. The colloquium will feature some presentations on current research in design theory and history and on recent design projects. A final panel discussion will follow, with Justin McGuirk, editor of the Icon magazine, and Mark Cousins (Architectural Association, London Consortium). The event also marks the closing of CitiesMethodologies, an interdisciplinary event on innovative methodologies across the arts and humanities at the Slade Research Centre (Woburn Square, 5-7 May 2010). Speakers include Mark Cousins (Architectural Association), Annelys de Vet (Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam), James Auger (Royal College of Art), Jimmy Loizeau (Goldsmiths), Teresa Stoppani (University of Greenwich), Eyal Weizman (Goldsmiths), Jonathan Hill (Bartlett School of Architecture).

The colloquium will be followed by a wine reception in the Wilkins Building Haldane Room. Participation is free and open to all (for information email: g.oropallo@ucl.ac.uk, wesleyaelbrecht@gmail.com). Critical minds: critical spaces is supported by the UCL Grand Challenge of Intercultural Interaction, the Graduate School Research Project Fund and the Department of Italian Studies.

But, wait a moment. “Problem-solving is the driving force”. Actually, this sounds quite similar to the old “form follows function”. So, what’s the difference?

According to Patrick Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects, author of the above quotation the difference is in the direction of the design intervention. So far we’ve juxtaposed Eucledian structures in order to create space or harness portions of it into environments. The rationale of the design is in the concept that links these solids. The reader may be familiar with the house Ludwig Wittgenstein designed in Vienna in 1927 for his sister, today seat of the Bulgarian cultural institute. There is maybe this concept expressed at its best, mind you, by a non professional architect. Volumes in Wittgenstein House develop from each other in an orderly albeit ambitious manner, as in a logical deduction. It’s like shedding light in the dark and acknowledge space.

A variation to this deductive way to building was dubbed “deconstructionism,” and consisted in disassembling  these configuration of solids before they were even erected, to show their relations in a more honest way.

Parametric design, on the contrary, is nothing about deduction. It is an attempt to let structures grow systematically, according to their relation with the environment, as a living organism would do in order to survive. Everything is interconnected, and to take into account everything, sophisticated softwares are necessary and do much of the work. Instead of “spaces,” Schumacher actually speaks of “fields,” which fluidly articulate themselves to accomodate the complexity of contemporary life.

Parametric design therefore bears a striking resemblance to organic forms. Curiously, it’s visually very close also to surrealist decoration patterns. Both styles share an oblique, decadent appeal. This is because organic structures are economical: organisms – as also computers if they are so programmed – always try to find the shortest way between A and B. This is why living forms are usually curvilinear and not square, Cartesian or Euclidean. A parametric city would resemble a circulatory system, rather than a modernist grid. Every element would be interconnected and the complexity of functions would lead the growth of the system.

Transition and fluidity are greatly praised by Schumacher. This makes one remember of the “natura non facit saltus” (nature does not make sudden jumps) motto by Lucretius. Also Gaudì’s architectures were supposed to imitate nature – and in the process praise divinity. The Sagrada Familia designed today would look a lot like a building by Zaha Hadid.

I like the idea of an architecture whose form develops according to fractal geometry (the geometry of leaves, plants, clouds and all natural structures) instead of being constrained by platonic solids. And yet, all this organic matter makes me feel like a virus, a parasite, as though I shouldn’t be walking along these circulatory systems. Or, in the best case scenario, I feel like a part of the system, inextricably linked to it and forced to give away some individuality.

I’ve taken some time to reflect upon this, and now I think the underlying reason for this awkward feeling is that this ideal biomimicry in architecture eventually eschews one crucial aspect of design I am otherwise used to. This is: confrontation between built space and human being, borne exactly of the artificiality of the constructed space.

This is a structural confrontation in which one usually develop a critical, informed understanding of things. It may just be premature to say, but parametric architecture to me feels like being sucked back in an ideal utero, in which the spatial sense that characterizes human beings as a species is dimmed and left unripe. No wonder it is actually the favourite style for international airports, the most iconic non-spaces around these days.

Visiting the David Chipperfield exhbition at the Design Museum (”Form Matters”, 21 October – 31 January 2010) and navigating with the camera the many maquettes made and used to research the urban areas on which he was commissioned interventions. The second picture refers to a museum under construction in Naga, Sudan. His forms are solid, euclidean, yet they seem to give way or to adjust to the surroundings, instead of making space around them and offer glossy shooting opportunities for photographers. Others prefer to concentrate on fantastically fascinating roof structures, while Chipperfield is actually concerned with creating space. After all, it’s architecture, but it’s easy to forget what it’s all about.

A site-specific intervention on the building by a local resident

"3 Km Europe" reads a writing on a house between the Peace centre and the new, gentrified side of Jaffa

The Peace House, whose building began in 2005, is now almost completed

The idea of the Peace House was originally launched by the late Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres. Named after the latter, it’s part of the seafront redevelopment of the mixed city of Jaffa and was designed by Massimiliano Fuksas as a dramatic spacial progression of pale green concrete slabs interspersed by glass panes, which offer an unconstrained view on the open sea – in the words of the Italian architect “a symbol of the state of emergency”.

Text and photography © Gabriele Oropallo, 2009.

The week I spent in Vienna last September was warm and brilliant. One day I was having lunch outdoors at the Kunsthalle on Karlsplatz, a coffeeshop and exhibition space carved in a piece of no planner’s land in the very centre of Vienna, where once the medieval walls stood and I was attracted by the soft-spoken colour texture of the tent cloth as this was hit by the bright sun. It reminded me of the return of figurative painting in the nineteen-twenties, after the war;  painters were then trying to provide some depth to their shapes without relying on perspective, the representation technique they had managed to escape from the decade before. They would superimpose layer upon layer of paint, with a beautiful waxy effect of translucence.

A man scrambles up the wall of a derelict watchtower in the middle of a military camp wearing a wading waistcoat and carrying a tripod. He’s a ornithologist, and he goes to the abandoned Israeli military base of Oush Grab (Beit Sahour, Bethlehem region) to study birds migrating from Turkey to Egypt through Palestine. Since the military left the base, the birds have started using the base as a stopover point, temporarily inhabiting the structures left behind season after season. The military camp was established by the British during the Mandate on Palestine, after the First World War, and has since been used, in turn, by the Jordanians and the Israelis. The space had been congealed for decades into the shape of a walled up instrument of control, that had a crucial influence of the life of people who lived next to it, however off-limits it was for them. Today, the site is the theatre for a chess game between the settlers, who want to found a new town there, the army that supports them, the international activists and the NGO’s that try to stop them and the Beit Sahour municipality that tries to make it into a public park.
Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal were inspired by the work of the ornithologist and the spontaneous practice of the birds. The artists/architects founded a few years ago in Bethlehem an architectural collective aimed at investigating security/control devices and engaging with the spatial realities of the Israeli-Palestinian in a propositional manner. The collective came up with a proposal that doesn’t aim at re-articulating and thus doing reiterating the function of the site, but at profaning it. The goal of their proposal is to release the energies harnessed when establishing and maintaining the site of control, and at the same time encourage both the birds in their seasonal return and nature in its slow process of dismantling of the man-made structures. This threefold programme is behind the idea of piercing all the walls of the buildings to provide a myriad inlets for the birds and let the buildings happily crumble down – not to be “lost”, but to be “regained”.

Text © Gabriele Oropallo, 2009. Photos © Nina Kolowratnik, Alessandro Petti, 2009.

On-site at ExperimentaDesign, DESIGN ACT invites you to a discussion about socially and politically engaged design.Visit and contribute to: a seminar featuring Swedish practitioners discussing historical and contemporary projects; live interviews during the opening week, and; an installation featuring a participatory archive of project examples where you can collect information and print your own publication. The installed and online archive of DESIGN ACT will be continually updated with media and materials produced from these activities.

How can design materialize ideas that can lead to wider change? Can design reform – or contest – social and political conditions? Where does this take place – in the design studio or on the factory floor, in exhibition settings or on the streets? What are the emerging tactics, outcomes and audiences for such forms of practice?

The DESIGN ACT seminar explores critical roles for designers in society. In Sweden, architecture, fashion and design have historically participated in constructing the ideals – and forms – of the welfare state. Today, practitioners continue to engage in social and societal issues, whether materializing a critique of the status quo, proposing alternatives to reform systems and spaces, or staging participatory design processes and public debates. While too often reduced to questions of form and function, such tendencies expose powerful and political forms of design practice.

Featuring a series of presentations from Swedish designers and a panel session with international guests, the DESIGN ACT seminar at ExperimentaDesign reflects on historical precedents and discusses examples of contemporary practice. Presentations by: Helena Mattsson, on Swedish welfare politics, critique and design; Ana Betancour, on architecture as catalyst for social change; Otto von Busch, on hactivism and participation in fashion design; Tor Lindstrand, on architecture and performance for staging new social interactions.

In the panel session following the presentations, the presenters, international guests and the audience take up the seminar theme in relation to issues in other contexts, disciplines and parts of the world – and, together, reflect on future directions for design.

The Venue will take place in: EXD’09 Lounging Space, Palácio Braamcamp, Pátio do Tijolo 25, Lisbon, Portugal. For details and updates on the participants and program: http://www.design-act.se

Installation: 9 September – 8 November

Live interviews: 10 September, 12AM – 8PM

Seminar: Friday 11 September, 2.30 – 8 PM

I didn’t take any plane but I’m way jet-lagged. I glance across the Gilo checkpoint from the balcony of a luxury resort, and I can sample a view that encompasses a landscape going from the third world to the very first in a few kilometres. I arrived in West Jerusalem and started my exploration into the (controversial) world of Israeli biblical archaeology. The dig on which I worked looked fascinating, with several layers of stratification that to the clear minds should be enough to demonstrate that this disputed land is best described as an omnibus, with passengers hopping on and off over the centuries. I’ve once been told that biblical archaeology in this land is about colonizing the past, while soldiers, farmers and ultra-orthodox settlers colonize the future. Israel’s first president said that the citizens of the new state had to keep their hands firmly in the soil, referring to the adjacent practices of agriculture and archaeology. After a week of participant observation, it turns out that some of the dig supervisors, local archaeologists, are very scientific in their approach and even critical of the political use of archaeology that’s been done over the years. To the point that the Israeli has to argue with the American volunteers who came here to find their Jewish roots, and believe that if a place is mentioned in the bible, then God granted perpetual ownership.

The name with which the dig is referred to, Ramat Rahel, is modern. This site was not mentioned in the Bible, and the reason for this is still under debate amongst archaeologists. Maybe it was a foreign outpost, and its position would support this view. On a hill higher than Jerusalem, half way between the capital and Bethlehem and overlooking the major trade route of Hebron Road, it made a perfect control device for the Assyrian that subjected the Kingdom of Judah in the fifth century BC. The site was developed during several phases and includes synagogues, churches, temples and mosques. Yet, one particularly intriguing section is the initially dull-looking B3: a stone quarry, turned burial ground in Byzantine times – and also the site of a trench during the 1948 and 1967 war, on the Israeli-Jordanian front. The supervisors of the dig are wary of the religious Jews that wonder around the site (which is a kibbutz, whose permanent residents run the resort) because according to religion, it’s forbidden to unearth Jewish graves. The tombs are given improbable coded names and swiftly covered with plastic canvases when strangers are around.

And yet, a few graves were already profaned a few decades ago by the very tractors that were digging the earth deep down to the bedrock to build the military trench, the outpost in which we also found a flagpole holder. Surgically cutting through the grave and exposing the remains inside them, those machines were actors of a fascinating and revealing game of perspectives on Zionism and its means and ends.

Here is visual story of my trip to Palestine/Israel in the summer of 2009.

Text and photography © Gabriele Oropallo, 2009.