Networks + wires

Thumbing Royston Landau’s New Directions in British Architecture (1968), part of the Studio Vista series, brought two interesting items to our attention. We’ve been looking at the birth of computing in Manchester and Cambridge and have come to learn that Lyons & Co. catering company ordered one of the first business computing machines in the UK. The firm was also responsible for the commissioning of Cedric Price to conduct a feasibility study into a ‘walk through’[1] centre to act as an ‘information machine’[2]for the public. The scheme was proposed for an existing building on the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road in London and known by the acronym OCH (Oxford Street Corner House) and designed to handle up to 5,000 visitors and staff in a flexible and dynamic arrangement designed to offer skills training, ‘teleconnections’ for the press, information storage and inter-city conference exchanges. Price conceived these interfaces using diagrams that made allusion to scientific structures and interconnectivity. This particular project preempts a plethora of technologies and services that have become embedded in modern cultural life, as far as Price was concerned the site and the city ‘must indeed allow for continuous delight in the unknown in social terms’ [3].

‘OCH can be used as a citizens’ inquiry service where teleconnections can be made to press news rooms, travel agencies, government ministries, to Parliament, industry, commerce etc, thus making information accessible which is at present underused or ignored because of access difficulties. [diagram A].

Or OCH can offer a skill-learning or research facility service through programmed machines [a Link drive-a-car trainer or a language teaching machine] or through teleconnections to other study centres. [diagram B]

Or OCH can be used as a centre equipped to provide facilities for information exchange, at a meeting level, at a conference level, or at an inter-city [concurrent exchange] conference level. [diagram C]

The basic user component in the centre would be the two-seater information carrel, but open floor space for observation, wandering, wondering, rest and refreshment by mobile preparation units is fundamental to the full use of the centre.’

Price did not consult a UK computer manufacturer during his period of research and development, instead he corresponded with US firm IBM over the use of their 360-30 computer in the development of a ‘cyber-teashop’.[4] The variety of high street typologies and interconnectivity of media that this proposal preempts are vast – the shop as no longer a place for exchange of finance and product, but as a showroom in the manner of the pioneering Nike Town projects of the 1990s, virtual learning environments, video conferencing and media hubs are but a few of the later established settings that can be perceived as embedded within Price’s notion.

Matthews (2007) writing of the project proposes that OCH ‘was a deliberate attempt to explore new architectural and educational territories’[5] and quotes Price as wishing to examine these contexts ‘unfettered by tradition – scholastic, economic, academic or class structure’[6]Matthews continues to suggest that the scheme developed as biased towards the technological concerns of the framework and that the social agency and interactivity became less prominent as Margaret Littlewood was not involved in the project. Of course a technologically driven series of environments had already emerged during the 1950s in the form of new manufacturing facilities which, in some senses, whilst acknowledging of the ergonomic demands of an environment were largely technocratic in nature.

Which leads us to the second and ultimately technocratic incidence of architecture, the Central Electricity Generating Board’s (CEGB) National Tower Testing Station (NTTS) at Cheddar Gorge in Somerset. The site was designed by a team under the direction of W.R. Box and operated as a commercial testing laboratory for the full scale testing of pylons and other structures from 1966. Landau, writing in 1969, is fascinated by its hugely flexible demands and expandable setting as architecture without buildings and whilst not emerging from a critical territory nonetheless embodied the spirit of Price and his contemporaries. The dramatic night time photo is from Landau’s book, as is the schematic.[7]

A 100 sqft mounting pad was secured to the floor of the disused quarry and the quarry sides used as fixing points to test the strength of the towers. Without the use of this particular site a 200ft high stand alone structure would have been required to serve the same function as the post-industrial manufactured landscape. The unique laboratory allowed specific loads to be applied to sections of the towers to test one area of the structure at a time and not to test the entirety to destruction.[8]

As ever those ‘pesky kids’, the urban explorers, have been scratching about the modern day ruins of this not so distant remnant of the future. The photograph above is from the UK site 28dayslater and was taken by user ‘rigsby‘ in December 2007, even less now remains on site as testified by later visits. As an edifice this scheme is loaded with associations to things that interest us: the infrastructure and architecture of the post-war period, the design work of the nationalised industries, the hardware of infrastructure, planning and infrastructure as networks and the use of scientific language in design, modern ruins and a host of other loosely floating notions yet to be tied down. In many senses we are yet to arrive at the type of mobile and ultimately flexible architecture presupposed by a generation of future thinkers, in others the ‘new’ forms of socio-cultural space have been erased from the memory as reality fast outstrips imagination – who remembers internet cafes with names like ‘Cyberia’? One installation here reminds us of the hardware demands of the other – the apparently ethereal, networked space, ‘free’ at the point of connection, tied by its attendant transmission devices. Infrastructure can be volume or void, solid or lattice in its manifestation, but its steady accretion in service of our continuing urbanisation in virtual and real contexts can be seen as the surreptitious age of networks + wires.

[1] Landau, R. (1968) New Directions in British Architecture (London: Studio Vista) p.108.

[2] Landau, R. (1968) p.108.

[3] Price, C. (1984) The Square Book (London: Wiley Academy) 2003 Edition, p.54.

[4] Matthews, S. (2007) From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog Publishing) p.177.

[5] Matthews, S. (2007) p.180.

[6] Price, C. (1984) ‘Oxford Corner House’ in Cedric Price: Works II (London: Architectural Association) p.65 as quoted by Matthews, S. (2007) p.180.

[7] Landau, R. (1968) pp.88-89.

[8] Lightfoot, E. & Duggan, D.M. ‘Rig for failure tests on scaffold towers’ in Materials and Structures, Volume 8, Number 6 (1975) pp.473-479.

Research Institute of Robotics and Technical Cybernetics, St. Petersburg.

S. V. Savin, B. I. Artiushin, Research Institute of Robotics and Technical Cybernetics, St. Petersburg. 1973-1987,

Some rather serious Soviet business, designed by S. Savin, B. Artiushin, no doubt featured in CCCP by Chaubin. We like it because it combines robots + concrete, two of our favourite things.

projection mapping / light space

Pablo Valbuena - Medialab Prado, Madrid

First brought to our attention via the digital archive slowly building on the excellent ICASEA blog attached to the UK/JP electronic art label, the work of artist/architect Pablo Valbuena challenges the perception of space by the direct manipulation of light to create complex geometric illusions. The use of form, space and light, highly conventional architectural terms, as layers of intervention and re_presentation through sculpture and projection mapping in his work is well removed from the prevalent employment of such.

Perhaps of most interest here are the interventions in urban space, rather than those in interior environments. The animation of the hard rectilinear landscape outside of the Medialab Prado in Madrid (2007) is a post-Tron digital dissection of space. It is remarkable how the aesthetic of cybernetic art has returned to a minimal and binary position. The works of Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda have consistently relied upon a retreat to minimal linear and geometric form that can be easily perceived as not too distant from the pioneering work of Lloyd Sumner and Roman Verostko.

Ryoji Ikeda - Datamatics

What is heritage? Was ist Denkmal?

This year students from Re_Map and Emergent Urbanism units participated in an international workshop in Hannover with European counterparts from TU Braunschweig, lauded by Peter Cook as producing some of the freshest new architectural talent. 10 years after Expo 2000, the students were asked to examine the state of the former Expo site and suggest possibilities for its regeneration, re-use or redistribution and examining the current state or location of the array of buildings. The site currently is vastly under occupied and many of the pavilions lie empty or derelict, though some of the more generic building types have become offices and education institutes. Many of the built objects were relocated almost immediately as the Expo concluded, though some were too permanent in their structural make-up to consider removal and too specific in their programme to provide obvious re-use scenarios. Perhaps the most renowned building of the event was the Dutch Pavilion, a vertical park, designed by MVRDV at the height of their post-FARMAX fame; it is exemplar of both permanence and specificity as the precursors to ruin.

The Dutch Pavilion was the architectural draw of the festival and the figure 2,800,000, applied at the end of the Expo, signals the number of visitors that encountered the weirdly stacked world. Perversely, the conceptual thinking behind the scheme was one concerning ‘man, nature, technology’ (the themes of the Expo and the vocal hook of Kraftwerk’s Expo2000 audio track) and symbiotic and cyclical systems; an ecology using vapour cooling, passive heating, biomass and wind generated power. The environmental contingency did not stretch to consider the post-expo landscape and the pavilion, devoid of windmills has been left to rot and vandalism since passing into private hands some years ago. The actual ownership of the site is now uncertain. The Dutch government are reported to mildly embarrassed at the scar they have inadvertently deposited on the outskirts of the city and are entering into negotiations to find a satisfactory reconfiguration of the existing condition. The rooftop restaurant shows signs of recent inhabitation by person or persons unknown – quite some address!

Working in teams in extreme weather conditions, the students spent three days analysing, recording and researching the cultural, social and political context of the site and its buildings. Fighting frostbite and visa delays the groups valiantly dedicated hours of work at the on site media-lab and developed and presented propositions based on their studies. The topic, unbeknownst to the organising parties at its inception, is a hot one in Hannover, sufficient to attract the attention of the local media and to warrant a representation of the ideas in a lecture at the Expo Plaza Festival in June 2010.

EXPO_GARDENS. A reappropriation of the international cultural flavour of the festival by the propagation and cultivation of plants indigenous to the countries that once occupied the vacant sites of the lower section of the expo site. Rather than offer a built solution, the group felt that an alternative draw to visit the relatively isolated and peripheral location would be met by the provision of botanical gardens paralleled with a commercial nursery.

GLAUBE[al]. Building on the success of The Whale as a church, this proposal assumes the global characteristics of the festival and the potential of reinstating the mothballed high speed rail link, by the development of a multi-faith park. A egalitarian landscape based on algorithmic projections of visitors, their faith, nationality would provide neutral meditation and encounter chambers for the cross pollination of faiths and ideas.

EXPO_EXPO. A gathering of all of the decaying and unloved monuments to World Expos and the kitsch replication of some that are treasured. A montage construction of assembled icons with a plethora of meaning. Are they monuments to an optimism of which we are now cynical? Are they demonstrative of a technology we now deride? Are they a spectacle or a dying dream?

DISPERSING CULTURE. After examining the array of pavilions that had been relocated either as originally intended, bought after the event or gifted, the students proposed the continued and accelerated removal and relocation of disused pavilions. The scheme was underpinned by a social agenda and the buildings were to be put to use within the city of Hannover as children’s nurseries, clinics and social centres at the expense of the authority and in the most deprived wards. The aim: to bring the world-class architecture of the expo from its desolate position on the edge of the city and give it to the people.

HYBRID CONSUMPTIVE LEISURE STRIP. Pursuing MVRDV’s formative agenda, this team examined the compression of disused pavilions and their deconstruction to provide a unique leisure landscape for a multitude of urban pastimes. Implicit in the scheme was the collision of programme and an anticipated migration between disciplines and the ‘consumption’ of leisure in an intensified experiential zone of motion and action. The area to be converted and host this amalgamation of activity was effectively the service strip of the festival site and plugs directly into the vast car parking provision that serves the adjacent, functioning, Hannover-Messe trade show centre.

CONTINENTAL TEST TRACK. Inspired by ideas floated in the WPA 2.0 competition earlier in the academic year, this team saw the reignition of an invigorated industry with specialist facilities as the key to unlocking the potential of the Expo site. Drawing on the history of Continental in Hannover and imagining the integrated growth of the German motor industry in consumer and sports arenas, a new test track with a rebranded Dutch Pavilion as its HQ would provide for all manufacturers to work with Continental in research and development at the new centre.

The full results of the workshop may be viewed online at: http://futurexpo.wordpress.com/

comparing utopias

The 49 Cities exhibithion at Storefront Gallery for Art and Architecture, New York, seeks to provide a comparitive datascape for unrealised urbanism. The proposal, born out of Work AC‘s research seminar at Princeton University concerned with ‘eco-urbanism’, began as one that considered the contemporary city, but rapidly acknowledged the role of the unbuilt utopian models on modern urban form; the work of Ebeneezer Howard, le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright perhaps most influential in this regard.

Using a standardised method of representation, the exhibition and catalogue convey with great visual acuity and clarity the characteristics of each model city. The built area, density, greenspace and infrastructure are all considered in their component parts and presented in a tabular form alongside the diagrammed plans of the respective cities. The back of the publication holds bar charts wherein the values of these parameters are overtly comparable. An incredibly simple idea, very well controlled and executed with consistency.

The book may be purchased here. There is also a 20 page PDF sample for free at the same address.

Site plan for Noahbabel. Coastal Waters, 1969 (Paolo Soleri). Image from Storefront. Copyright Work AC

Site plan for Tokyo Bay. Tokyo, 1960 (Kenzo Tange). Image from Storefront. Copyright Work AC

090511 goto run

This is the blog based archive of events, objects and spaces that are pertinent or of concern to the Re_Map B[Arch] at the Manchester School of Architecture. It represents the interests of Dr. Nick Dunn and Richard Brook, their travels and working diary.