Crafted NarrativesIntimate Spaces, Hidden Spaces, Spaces You don’t See

Published in Venice in 1499, the book Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (hypno = sleep; eros = love; mache = fight; polis = city) is a tale of architecture, craft and love. In a dreamlike scenario the main character, Polyphilo, pursues his beloved Polia. Polyphilo’s saga is embellished with minute descriptions of the spaces through which he travels. Landscape, buildings and building ornaments perform as allegorical figures that express his erotic desire for Polia.

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is illustrated using 168 delicate and superbly crafted woodcuts that poetically portray the settings for Polyphilo’s adventures. The artefact bears a deep resonance with the tale it narrates. We can think of this book as a microcosm in itself, a miniaturised setting where Polyphilo’s oneiric voyage is not only represented but also enacted. In Polyphilo’s microcosm, architecture and landscape operate as bearers of shifting associations. Meanings, or use, are never fixed. Instead, they change constantly, adapting to the circumstances of the plot as they do in our dreams. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili will be one of the sources of inspiration for our work in unit 2.

We will explore old-fashioned techniques of craft production and venture into the restoration of obsolete narratives in search of hybrid, controversial and sophisticated architectures to respond to a culture in a state of shift. In the first term we will design a fictional set inspired by a literary narrative. Fine handcraft drawing and modelling will be our major design tools. In the second term we will design a building in London’s South Kensington area, working with history and the narrative of the site.

The programme will materialise in a medium-scale scheme that will include: a place to hide, a place to be intimate and to indulge the body. We will pursue the potential of the craft-led, bespoke design in this economic downturn, and look at how it might contribute to the social balance between short-term gain and lasting, adaptable cultural heritage. We will work with a variety of collaborators, visit craft workshops in Japan and explore the resources of Hooke Park in Dorset. Our work will focus on the material, the miniaturised, the fine and the graceful.

TAKERO SHIMAZAKI is a director of Toh Shimazaki Architecture in London. He also runs t-sa forum workshops, which are associated with the practice. He has taught and lectured internationally. He graduated from the Bartlett and previously worked for Alison and Peter

Smithson, Richard Rogers and Itsuko Hasegawa.

ANA ARAUJO practises as a designer, educator and researcher. She works at the crossover between spatial and textile design, having published and exhibited internationally (Germany,

Holland, Brazil, UK, Japan, Australia). She is a co-founder of Atelier Domino, a London-based studio committed to the realisation of hand-crafted art and design.

Woodprints, Hypnerotomachia Poliphilo, 1499

INDEED, HYPNEROTOMACHIA IS THE FIRST NARRATIVE ARTICULATION OF ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE AT THE VERY INCEPTION OF THE MODERN AGE. IT ALREADY EXPOUNDS A POETIC VISION THAT SETS A TEMPORAL BOUNDARY TO THE EXPERIENCE OF ARCHITECTURE, SHOWING THAT ARCHITECTURE IS NOT ONLY ABOUT FORM AND SPACE BUT ABOUT TIME, ABOUT THE PRESENCE OF MAN ON EARTH.

Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Polyphilo or the Dark Forest Revisited, p. xiv

Taking as an inspiration the book Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a main aspect of our agenda in Unit 2 is to address architecture as a backdrop for human living. This approach contrasts to other prevailing currents in vigour in the West since the Renaissance, which tend to regard architecture either as an instrumental practice (functionalism) or a formal one (formalism).

Architectural thinkers such as Dalibor Vesely and Alberto Pérez-Gómez (both having had a strong bond to the Architectural Association in the past) suggest a fundamental link between the conditions of production and the conditions of reception of architecture. In their understanding, architectures generated in the instrumental, robotic setting of commercial offices are likely to promote an equally robotic, instrumental, pattern of living. By the same token, a more humane, poetic studio setting or mode of production would in theory engender spaces and behaviour patterns with similar qualities.

Our aim in Unit 2 is to provide a propitious setting for the production of poetic and humane architectures. A basic premise for this is that the products and processes we engage with appeal to all human senses. Again, this contrasts to other prevailing assumptions at vogue in the West for a number of centuries, which tend to regard the architectural experience as a predominantly visual affair. Unit 2 will be committed to modes of making that are corporeal rather than purely visual. Such processes invariably relate to traditional craft techniques, such as weaving, pottery, carpentry as well as old forms of printing.

This year we will pay special attention to the woodblock technique – the same method employed in 1499 to produce the illustrations of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphilo. Woodblock printing originated in China around 200 AD. In Europe, it became a common practice around 1460. Woodblocks were largely employed to make architectural drawings from the fifteenth until the eighteenth century.

The processes of woodcarving and printing, to which you will be introduced in the beginning of the year, are multi-sensorial. Listening to the sound of the chisel in the wood, you can tell if your gesture is well-tuned to the material you are carving. Smelling the woodblock, you can guess how soft the wood is and how much pressure you need to apply to your hands to be able to cut it. Touching a carved wood surface you will know the quality of the print it will produce. We don’t expect you to become masters in woodcarving or printing. What we expect is that this technique attunes your senses to the materials and processes – whether manual, mechanic or digital – you choose to work with.

Woodprints, Classical Columns, Andrea Palladio , 1738

Woodblock printing: tools & materials

Woodprint, Sudden Shower over the Ohashi Bridge near Atake, Hiroshige, 1857

term one I shift in focus (1): hide and seekFrom weeks 2 to 4, we will develop a series of workshop-related activities, where you will be asked to translate a literary passage of your choice into a series of woodprints. The artist and woodprinter Wuon Gean Ho will introduce you to the basic skills of woodcarving and printing. You are expected to gradually develop your own language of spatial representation using wood materials and techniques.

In week 5 we will review your initial drawings.

As you will have learnt from the introductory workshops, an important feature of the woodprint is that it stands somewhere between a means of representation and a material artefact. If we take, for instance, Hiroshige’s prints (above), we notice that, (if) from a distant look it might come across merely as a stylized depiction (of a landscape, a ritual, or a living being), through a close up it will reveal a different type of information, namely, the material conditions through which the print is produced – the veins of the woodblock, the thickness of the ink, the shape of the chisel. In Katsutoshi Yuasa’s prints (below), this becomes even more evident.

Woodprints are devices that make our perception shift. Sometimes we see the depicted figure, sometimes we see the texture of the printing materials. When one becomes visible, the other becomes invisible.

After producing your series of woodprints, you are asked to design a three-dimensional object that has shifting qualities of some sort: when one aspect of the object becomes visible, the other should become (temporarily) invisible. The object should be produced employing one or more of the techniques you learnt when making the woodprint: carving, pressing, moistening, inking, stamping etc.

Your object is to be sited in a place of your choice at the Architectural Association building, as part of our Unit exhibition ‘hide and seek’ (Architectural Association, 16-30 November) It should respond to the following conditions:

It must be invisible from at least one angle;1. It must still relate to the literary passage you chose in the first task and engage with the 2. character(s) to which it refers;It must respond to the physical conditions of your chosen site.3.

Method

There will be a workshop in week 6 to introduce this project. We will use photographic techniques – framing, focusing, darkening etc – to help you choose a site and highlight in it the aspects in which you are interested – texture, context, light, traces of use etc.

The process of developing the object, and the techniques investigated will form part of the Technical Studies, which will be presented at the beginning of the Winter Term. Initial tests and ideas will be collected in the Autumn Term in preparation for this presentation.

In week 7 we will travel to Hooke Park, where you will produce most of your material intervention. The installation will take place in week 8. Once the work is installed you are asked to produce a photographic documentation of your device showing, with a great degree of precision:

How it becomes invisible;1. How it refers to the literary passage you chose in the first instance;2. How it responds to the physical conditions of your chosen site;3.

Outcome

At the Final Review of this project in week 10 you are asked to bring:

Your initial woodprints;1. Full reference of the literary passage you chose;2. Narrative explaining your proposal3. Photographic documentation of the production of the device;4. Sketches and construction drawings;5. The device you produced;6. Photographic documentation of your installation.7.

Woodprint, One hundred million years of solitude 2, Katsutoshi Yuasa, 2009

Field Trip

IN THE LAST WEEK OF TERM ONE OUR UNIT WILL TRAVEL TO TOKYO. THERE WILL BE A WORKSHOP WITH ARTIST AND WOODPRINTER KATSUTOSHI YUASA (HTTP://WWW.KATSUTOSHIYUASA.COM/) WHERE YOU WILL HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO REFINE YOUR SKILLS IN WOODCARVING AND WOODPRINTING. WE WILL ALSO VISIT THE ATELIER OF FASHION DESIGNER AKIRA MINAGAWA (HTTP://WWW.MINA-PERHONEN.JP) AS WELL AS SOME SELECTED BUILDINGS,

WORKSHOPS AND GALLERIES IN AND AROUND TOKYO.

Textile embroidery, Akira Minagawa, 2006

term two I shift in focus (2): intimate spaces, hidden spaces, spaces you don’t see

Lived spaces are, in general, adaptable. If we think, for instance, at the building that houses the Architectural Association, it is a house converted into school. When using this building, sometimes we identify elements of the old house sometimes the new use (as a school) completely takes over. Our perception shifts constantly. Like in the woodprint. Likewise, as architectural students, you will be familiar with the idea of ‘adapting’ your rooms, turning them into some sort of studio space when you are busy developing your projects. There are different ways of adapting or converting spaces. There are temporary conversions and permanent conversions. And there are different degrees in which one use might take over the other.

The space you are asked to design for South Kensington must be adaptable. You are required to employ the same techniques learnt in the woodprinting workshops in London and Japan to house at least two different programmes in the same space – though not necessarily simultaneously. For example, your space may have a day use and a night use. Or you may choose to address the way in which your building negotiates between a past and a present function. Or your space may adapt itself to house different types of living beings that may or may not relate to each other. In whichever case, the programmes that you are dealing with must be, to an extent, invisible to one another.

Method

Clues about how you will develop your project are to be taken from site observation. Employing the skills acquired in the photography workshop you are asked to photograph your site highlighting the elements you are most interested in. We are not asking for an objective survey. Rather, we want a subjective impression that shows the aspects of the place to which you are intuitively drawn. Remember that your photographs must also contain the characters with whom you will deal in your project. You may or may not choose to link these characters to the ones you dealt with in the first term.

By the end of week 2 we will have an internal Pin Up to review your site documentation. From then on each student will follow a different course.

Outcome

For the Interim Review you should present the following:

Site photographs and woodprints, including site plan with proposal;1. Scaled model (scale to be agreed with tutors);2. Three-dimensional Section including context and inhabitation;3. Narrative contextualising your proposal.4.

For the Final Jury you should present the following:

Site photographs and woodprints, including site plan with proposal;1. Scaled model (scale to be agreed with tutors);2. Three-dimensional section including context and inhabitation;3. Detail drawing/artefact;4. Temporal drawing/artefact;5. Narrative contextualising your proposal.6.

Illuminated Maniscript (14th century); Sleeping Beauty (original woodcut from 19th century)

term three I shift in focus (3): crafting a narrative

Synthetizing love, geometry, and imagination through a vision of ancient architecture, the book became a source of architectural ideas in Europe for at least 300 years. Hypnerotomachia was translated into French in 1546 and published in 1551, 1554, and 1561, Transformed French versions with different titles appeared in 1600, 1657, and 1772. More recent free translations appeared in 1803, 1811, and 1883. A large section of the first part was translated into English under the title The Strife of Love in a Dream, published in 1592 and 1890.

Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Polyphilo or the Dark Forest Revisited, p. xiii

One of the great achievements of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was that it disseminated architectural ideas to a non-specialized audience for a period of over 300 years. This deed was attained through a ‘disguise’ of the architectural content that in this book operated as a backdrop for a courtly love story.

One of the challenges of Unit 2 is to find a contemporary format to circulate architectural ideas in a way that they can be as widely disseminated and influential as the ideas disseminated in Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

Our final submission will take the form of a book, made to disseminate the architectural ideas you generated throughout the year to a non-specialized audience. Your book could be made out of paper, timber, metal, fabric. It could take the form of a novel, a catalogue, a comic, a pop-up, a manual, a recipe book – you should choose whatever form you find most suitable to communicate your ideas to non-architects. You are also asked to think of the conditions of production of your book: should it appear in the form of a rather exclusive, finely crafted object, should it be a limited edition for collectors, or should it be mass-produced? Would you like it to be sold or exhibited? Is it a quarto, a folio, a pocket or a miniature book? How does it integrate all the different projects and processes you have been through?

In the course of our final eight weeks each of you will focus on the production of your book. We will have a consultation with architect and bookbinder Willem de Bruijn in week 2. You should bring samples of what you intend to produce then. There will be an Internal Pin Up in Week 4.

The Final Jury will take place in weeks 5 and 6.

some references

Lisa Appignanesi, Mad, Bad and Sad: the history of women and the mind doctors from 1800 to the present, London, Virago, 2008.

Catherine Arnold, City of Sin: London and its Vices, London, Simon and Schuster, 2010.

Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel, trans. Ruth L. C. Simms, New York, New York Review Books, 1964.

Judith Clark & Adam Philips, The Concise Dictionary of Dress, London, Violette Editions, 2010.

Francesco Colona, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: the strife of love in a dream, trans. Joscelyn Godwin, London, Thames & Hudson, 1999.

Marguerite Duras, Moderato Cantabile, trans. Richard Seaver, London, Oneworld Classics, 2008.

Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker, New York, Vintage, 1996.

Liane Lefaivre, Leon Battista Alberti’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: recognizing the architectural body in the early Italian Renaissance, Cambridge (Mass.) and London, MIT Press, 2005.

Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Polyphilo or The Dark Forest Revisited: An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture, Cambridge (Mass.) and London, MIT Press, 1994.

Roy Porter, London: A Social History, London, Penguin, 2000.

Richard Sennet, The Craftsman, London, Allen Lane, 2008.

Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper, Sedgwick, Leete’s Island Books, 1977.

Dalibor Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation, Cambridge (Mass.) and London, MIT Press, 2004.

Artist Books

Fiona Banner, All the world’s fighter planes, [s/l], Vanity Press, 2006.

Christian Boltanski, Inventory of objects belonging to a young woman of Charleston, Charleston, S.C., Spoleto Festival, 1991.

Jeremy Deller, Folk archive: contemporary popular art from the UK, London, Bookworks, 2005.

Mark Dion, Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy Manchester, AHRB, Research Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacies; London, Bookworks, 2005.

Susan Hiller, The J. street project : 2002 – 2005, Warwickshire, Compton Verney ; Berlin, DAAD, 2005.

Sharon Kivland, Memoirs, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire University, 2001. Michael Landy, Break down inventory, London, Ridinghouse, 2001. Gerhard Richter, 128 details from a picture, Halifax, N.S., Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1980. Edward Ruscha, Twentysix gasoline stations, Alhambra, Cunningham, 1969.

Daniel Spoerri, An anecdoted topography of chance, New York, Something Else Press, 1966.