Speculating with Architecture – Architecture Graduate Shows 2012

I was prompted to write this blog posting in response a friend’s comments on the recent architectural graduate shows that are currently on around London and the rest of country. Needless to say he was less than impressed with the work he viewed, dismissing the majority of it as ‘utter crap’ which is having a detrimental effect to the profession as a whole. Worryingly, this ill informed and distressing perception is too common; you only need to look at the BD website comments about the recent Bartlett show to see a number of opinions claiming the work as non-architecturally relevant.

These comments are usually inarticulate and unsubstantiated. One reader even proudly claims that he has never visited any of these shows, but can tell enough from the thumbnail images that they were not ‘architecture’. The absence of any analytical critique and his lack of viewing the work only serve to undermine the validity of his opinion.

Fortunately however these comments are outnumbered by well thought out responses, critique and praise for the creative fervour of these young architects. These responses coming from a place of deeper understanding of the life long process of architectural education. For example:

‘The Bartlett School of Architecture has historically very often been criticised of its imaginative approach to architecture. From my experience in this school during the past two years, I believe that students and staff see criticism as an essential method for the evolution of creativity and innovative thinking and thus take it very seriously.


I have learnt that "criticism" can lead to the production of knowledge when it is very specific and open to thoughtful discussion, rather than when it is being purely emotional and generic. The way I understand "criticism" in its most dynamic form, is when it is questioning itself.


The variety and depth of analysis on historical, social, political, religious, technical, economical and philosophical questions of the students projects, is articulated in their "portfolios" and "technical reports", where the so called "reality" is the driving force and presupposition for the breeding of their imaginative thoughts and creations.

The show, is exactly a "show", where in most cases, the students present more of a minimum of their creations and research and less of a process. But, I believe that this is exactly the point of a show: To walk through a space where creativity and passion for innovative thinking prevail. If this is crudely called "art", then it is a compliment.'

These shows (and I mean all shows around the country not just the Bartlett) are indeed a celebration of the potential of architecture, stretching its periphery and how it’s defined. The results often leave you feeling invigorated, refreshed, uplifted and inspired! And that’s exactly what these shows should do. As mentioned above we only get to catch a glimpse of the intense and rigorous processes that go behind the work on show but the purpose of the show is to share a small piece of their infectious creative energy.

I hope that these shows remind us that Architecture is not only a profession, nor is it only built work…it’s a discipline, a concept, an event, an act, a process, a time based phenomena... – all the ingredients that make it such a rich and diverse subject. Architecture is primarily a way of doing things and as such it will always seep out and merge into other disciplines.

An integral part of being an architect/ designer is to be able to broach new topics and subjects quickly with a powerful analytical outlook. This is what we’re seeing developing here. The fact that a school like the Bartlett produces students who don’t just enter the world of architecture but go into other disciplines such as film, art, product design, fashion, music etc or become pioneers in, for example, emerging worlds of interactive space and augmented realities is incredibly exciting and illustrates how powerful this creative training is. And for those who do remain in the more ‘traditional’ architecture roles, they tend to be better rounded and successful architects. Why is it that these types of students are so highly sought after by majority the architectural profession?

It’s wonderful to see and to be a student experimenting and speculating about what architecture is and can be, these are very real skills that are imperative to the practicing architect who wants to raise the aspirations of his clients and other stakeholders, find inventive solutions to a brief, help facilitate a conversation with communities about creating unified vision, refine a concept down to the working detail etc. Just looking through a technical report that accompanies a project and you quickly realise the depth of analytical thought and research that has gone into each project...these are not just whimsical ideas floating around in a world of fantasy.

On show at our architectural schools are the early stages of a long process that lasts a lifetime and beyond. Schooling offers a unique opportunity to explore and develop creative faculties, an architectural mindset and rigorous approach. It doesn’t always work or suite everyone although the profession as a whole is looking at widening the ways you can train to be an ‘architect’ (and the way the profession self critiques itself is greatly assisted by the analytical tools you see being demonstrated in our schools).

I hope to be working with some of these young talented architects very soon as they enter back into practice. I am looking forward to their enthusiasm, inventiveness and creativity enriching and challenging my own working practices.

Here are some examples of student work from the Bartlett work featured in the current show. (Apologies for focusing on the Bartlett primarily, I hope to feature work from other schools in the near future. Also apologies if I haven't credited your work for some of the photos I took at the show - contact me and I will)

Ayaka Suzuki - Place Making

BSc Arch Year 1 Library Bed Brass

BSc Arch Year 1 Small Drawing Room Chest Lead

Chimera RC2 Group Project

Fergus Knox Pearl - River Gardens Regeneration Project

Ifigeneia Liangi - Nostalgia of the Future 2013

Katherine Hegab - Gaming monastery, Tokyo

Lewis James - A Catylytic Architecture

Luke Royffee - Macys Balloon assembly of Kermit

Man Fai (Martin) Tang - Eternal Autumnal Micro-climates of Kyoto

Michelle F C Lam - The Tanka Archipelago

Ming Deng - Urban carnival

Tom Smith - Simulating a car crash architecture

Yeung Piu So - Karl Marx Allee Monument

Yolanda Leung  - Refuge and floating research platform

Unit 23

Unit 9

Wang Shu's Amateur Architecture

'I design a house instead of a building. The house is the amateur architecture approach to the infinitely spontaneous order. Built spontaneously, illegally and temporarily, amateur architecture is equal to professional architecture. But amateur architecture is just not significant.

One problem of professional architecture is, that it thinks too much of a building. A house, which is close to our simple and trivial life, is more fundamental than architecture. Before becoming an architect, I was only a literati. Architecture is part time work to me. For one place, humanity is more important than architecture while simple handicraft is more important than technology.

The attitude of amateur architecture, - though first of all being an attitude towards a critical experimental building process -, can have more entire and fundamental meaning than professional architecture. For me, any building activity without comprehensive thoughtfulness will be insignificant.

Winning this award is something that I had not expected. For many years, I have been pursuing my dream on a solitary course. Before this award, I had never published any architectural design collections or designed any buildings outside of China. I always see myself as an amateur architect, so it was a huge and pleasant surprise for me to receive this honor. I wish to thank the judges for their insight and comments.' - Wang Shu

Pritzker Prize acceptance Speech 

As the first architect born and educated in China to win this award, I accept with both honor and reverence. You should know that China, despite its great architectural tradition, has not had an official system for professional architects over the past thousands of years. Modern architecture as a profession, starting from my teacher's teacher, has only been in existence for three generations, making this award one of special importance for Chinese architects. A young architect myself, I have to say that I owe this award to the age we now live in. It is in this golden age that China has achieved unprecedented prosperity and openness, giving me so many opportunities to make difficult architectural experiments in a short span of time. Here, I wish to thank my partner Lu Wenyu and all my friends who have helped me before. Yes, I can see some of you in this room today.

Maybe it is because the professional architecture system in this country is still in its infancy stage, or maybe it is because so many things have happened in the past decades, but I still remember that 30 years ago, when I was studying at the architecture department of Nanjing Institute of Technology, "What is architecture?" was the question most often raised. Once, Mr. Tong Jun, my respected professor, who is also the first architect in modern China to study traditional gardens, was asked this same question by a humble student. His answer was simple, "Architecture is just a small thing."

Yet, it is this small thing that has profoundly changed the outlook of China and the lives of the Chinese people over the past 30 years. It has been a process full of experiments and confusions. As an architecture student who had read too much philosophy at school, I first embraced modern architecture with full passion, and then quickly turned my attention to post-modern architecture. Just as I was starting to feel bored about the extensively artificial features of the modern buildings, I fell in love with deconstruction philosophy and architecture. I was so excited that I even designed and built several deconstructive buildings myself. But throughout the process I was confused by the same question, "Are my buildings deeply rooted in my own culture?" This was one of the reasons why I chose to live in seclusion in the 1990s. I withdrew from the professional architecture system, and turned to the renovation of old buildings. I spent days and nights working with local craftsmen. And I realized that compared with modern buildings that are more about fabrication, there is another type of building that recognizes things that are already in existence. Unlike modern buildings that focus on abstract space, this other type of building focused on creating a sense of place and connecting with the past. And compared with buildings carrying a strong human imprint, traditional Chinese buildings are closer to nature, taking architecture to a whole new horizon. It is an entirely different world of architecture that I had never seen or learned before, but it contains something more valuable than what modern buildings can offer. If modern architecture is all about the professional architecture system, I would rather call myself an amateur.

All my architectural activities so far have taken place in and for China, but the issues involved in these activities are not confined to China. Many of the architecture-related issues that have emerged in China amidst tectonic changes in the past decades have all been experienced in other parts of the world, although they are taking place in China on a larger scale, with a stronger impact and at a faster speed. In a country that only had craftsmen but not architects just 100 years ago, such changes have resulted in a sharp conflict of civilizations. Therefore, architects should not just see themselves as professional technicians, but also demonstrate a wider perspective, deeper thinking, clearer values and conviction.

In all of my architectural design activities I have constantly asked myself the following questions: How can an architecture founded on craftsmanship survive in today's world? What is the relevance of the traditional Chinese landscape system in a world filled with gigantic artificial structures? In a society undergoing massive city-building campaigns, how should urban development be handled without resorting to major demolition and reconstruction? How can new urban buildings connect with memories of the past–that might be otherwise lost as structures are demolished–and re-establish their cultural identities? What can be done in the realm of architecture to overcome the stark contrast between urban and rural areas in China? Is it possible to ensure that alongside the top-down professional system of modern architecture, ordinary people’s right to initiate their own building activities is also protected? Is it possible to find smarter ways for addressing environmental and ecological challenges by drawing on the wisdom found in traditional architecture and grassroots building activities? Is there a way for us to express our architectural pursuit with stories and feelings without resorting to gigantic, symbolic and iconic structures? How can an independent architect maintain the attitude and work style against the background of a powerful modern system?

I always say that I am not just designing a building, but a world of diversity and difference and a path that leads us back to nature. These are the questions I was asking myself when I learned I was given the award, and these are the questions I will continue to focus on in my future endeavors. 

The Differing realities of Architecture - Raimund Abraham

For Raimund Abraham architecture ‘was a device to elevate the sacred with the profane.’  Throughout his career drawing was a powerful tool in exploring his architectural vision, in his own words ‘as an architect it is very important that you distinguish between different realities. There’s the reality of the drawing and the reality of the building. So one could say, or at least it is the common belief that architecture has to be built; I always denied that, because ultimately it is based on an idea. I don’t ever need a building to verify my idea. Of course, what with a building is more its vanity and actual physical experience. But I anticipate; I wouldn’t even build it if I could not anticipate how it would be.’ (Taken from the full logos interview below).

For me Raimund’s ideas on the differing realities of architecture resound very deeply with the ethos of many ideas I have discussed in this blog. Architecture is not only a built reality but has another reality that exists within the mind of the creator (and once built it is recreated in the subjective experiences of the observer), drawn realities here are equal and often more powerful than their built counterparts. All great physical architecture points towards this inner experience in one way or another, perhaps this is what Raimund meant by to be successful at making architecture the ‘sacred must prevail.’

I hope you enjoy this inspiring interview:

A Conversation with Raimund Abraham with Gregory Zucker taken from LOGOS INTERVIEW

Q:  Earlier, we spoke about the difference between architecture and “buildings”. Could you explain what you meant?

A:  I consider architecture a discipline, not a profession. Considering the classic periods of architecture, architecture was more or less confined to the sacred and political power. Architecture represented a spiritual device and now it is considered that it should merely ornament our lives.

I think the major break in history occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century. When the old social or the known social structures collapsed: no more monarchies and a new society emerged. With that new society entered an evolution in technology. You had new programs so architecture became synonymous with the new ideologies and the power of the worker in work more than celebrating the sacred, so, for example, you had the factories and workers’ housing. Now it appears that almost any domain can be expressed through architecture. Maybe this is true. Yet, for me architecture’s role is to elevate the profane with the sacred. If you succeed in making architecture, the sacred has to prevail. That means that in the most profane or the most pragmatic program, the program always has to succumb to this period of the sacred whether it is a small house, a cathedral or a temple.

It is the nature of making things which I believe is the true foundation for any artistic discipline, whether it’s film-making, architecture, painting, or sculpture. This whole “making” is challenged by new technology. The technology is totally divorced from the “making” because ultimately you make things with your hands. When I met Jonas Mekas and other experimental filmmakers, I was inspired by the idea that you only need a camera to make a film. Similarly, you can reduce the making of architecture to a piece of paper and a pencil. Even if I don’t build, when I make an architectural drawing I construct it so I always anticipate the physicality, the decay, the atrophy of material in the metal so this has to do with making.  There’s incredible precision. The beautiful mystery of architecture is rooted in the precision of how to put one stone on top of the other. It’s not the stone itself; it’s the cut in between the stones, the seam. The precision of the emphasis is the principle of structure. How they are joined or how they are divorced.

As an architect it is very important that you distinguish between different realities. There’s the reality of the drawing and the reality of the building. So one could say, or at least it is the common belief that architecture has to be built; I always denied that, because ultimately it is based on an idea. I don’t ever need a building to verify my idea. Of course, what with a building is more its vanity and actual physical experience. But I anticipate; I wouldn’t even build it if I could not anticipate how it would be.

Q: Once the building is actually built the public is forced to deal with it. How should architecture relate to the public?

A: It has to relate to program. Without program you can’t have architecture, but the program has to be translated; it has to be challenged by the ideal of the discipline. So the program can never dominate. It’s a conflict, which, of course, does not exist in film because film is done and then it is shown to the public. It is self-contained, while architecture is not because when it is built it is the offered for use. It all depends on how you define “use’” philosophically. ‘”Use” can either be a celebration of function, which ultimately in its optimal implication would be a Fascist result because it would be completely covered by how the program had been implemented. So in architecture I think the program has to be reinterpreted. Even on a very basic level. For example, when the artists discovered the lofts in New York, completely new ways of living were offered because they had universal space. If you compare loft-living with an apartment where you have an entrance, you have a living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom, your life is defined by the nature of the rooms. Thus, the more, I’d say, bourgeois inhabiting those spaces becomes. It’s more oppressive because then life becomes a habit and I believe that architecture has a role of challenging that habit at all times. It becomes a creative force in your life.  Architecture has that ability, otherwise it would just be too oppressive, too influential, and perhaps it would dictate the way you behave in space.

In order to build something you have to violate the site. You dig a hole in the ground, which means you violate. That’s why the Indians only build teepees or build their permanent structures of stone on the rocks and never violated out of respect for the earth. So there is this conflict between the structure and the site. The reconciliation is that you create the formal conditions, a new equilibrium. The equilibrium you have intervened into and disturbed has to be reconciled.  That is really the role of architecture.

Q: And what about your project in China?

A: Like many other sites in China, they have erased all traces of what was there before. So I had to create my own memory. Instead of intervening in a landscape, as I discussed before, I had to imagine the block, with houses, whatever function it had and then I carved into the block. So the block became actually an extension of the earth. And then of course the challenge was how to geometricize that. It was an emotional act from the first moment I held that chisel; that chisel bit the block, then I started to translate that emotional topography into a constructible geometric landscape. And so every single point in the landscape now is defined.

Q: I see, but you’re dealing with a culture that has a very long history of architecture.

A: This history is completely ignored by the present so-called ruling class. I feel like China wants to do, or is more or less successfully doing, what took the industrialized world, like America, a hundred years. They’re doing it in ten and, of course, there is a consequence. The culture is in danger. The only part of their culture that you can still sense is their food.

The real conflict is between the land and the city. All this progress, this obsession with reaching the top level of progress in industrialization in the world leaves all the peasants behind. Eighty percent of China is made up of peasants. This is also the lifeline for the country and there’s no program of how to cope now with that conflict of the poverty in the country and the new wealth in the cities. It’s apocalyptic out there. Beijing was a horizontal city, only pagodas, and the architecture was visible or reached above the horizon of the houses. Now they just have left a small portion of it, which is now being gentrified; its becoming like a SoHo and so that’s what you witness there.

Q: I am interested in hearing your critique of the project at Ground Zero, as well as hearing your explanation for the design you proposed.

A: There was no hope from day one that the commercial world would really go for an architectural gesture that would be as radical as the event they claimed 9/11 was. Instead of saying, “Okay, now Mr. Silverstein, let’s get you some architects to build the most efficient commercial buildings there,” they tried to cover their intentions by saying, “Okay, now we need architecture.” From day one, the project was a disguised commercial site plan. It is very clear that when the pragmatic force starts to dominate that process, they will do whatever they want and then more or less declare the imprints of the two commercial towers as sacred because of the original event. I think that is blasphemy. It’s a fake…you see that’s what I called it at the beginning: the necessity of architecture to celebrate the sacredness; this is just the opposite. It’s fake sacredness.

What I made was a metaphoric proposal. I just had three gigantic blocks which formed three walls, parallel walls on the side, and then I chose the moments when the event occurred, when the first plane and the second plane hit the towers. Then, when the first tower collapsed and when the second tower collapsed, simply as moments of an event. I located the sun vertically and horizontally for each of those time frames. I cut through those three walls in that angle of the sun. So, in a way, you caught the moment, a moment without any kind of a narrative reference. When you would be standing in that cut, at that particular moment in time, the sun would hit you. The architecture would celebrate and essentially revive that space and time, which became synonymous.

In the dreams of the Cartographer - Julie Mehretu

These complex densely layered abstract works from Julie Mehretu are both beautiful and captivating. Utilising architectural drawing in a fascinating way she creates unusual spaces that echo the marks of a master cartographer, yet they are of no real place. They are remarkable and compelling, drawing us into worlds that appear to have traces of an intense history.


The artist herself speaks on work ‘I think of my abstract mark-making as a type of sign lexicon, signifier, or language for characters that hold identity and have social agency. The characters in my maps plotted, journeyed, evolved, and built civilisations. I charted, analyzed, and mapped their experience and development: their cities, their suburbs, their conflicts, and their wars. The paintings occurred in an intangible no-place: a blank terrain, an abstracted map space. As I continued to work I needed a context for the marks, the characters. By combining many types of architectural plans and drawings I tried to create a metaphoric, tectonic view of structural history. I wanted to bring my drawing into time and place.’


One could draw parallels with the art of the Australian aborigines, where landscape and terrain is deeply interwoven into consciousness, and drawing and mark making is used to illuminate the narrative of the land. 

Xenakis’s Spatialised Music

Iannis Xenakis’s work inhabits a fascinating world located on the peripheries of Architecture and Music. His work is born from a remarkable life having been a resistance fighter, mathematician, composer and an architect – a true polymath.

Xenakis’s work explores the ‘meta order’ that exists in seemingly chaotic systems. Nouritza Matossian writes of him in her autobiography: 'Xenakis knew that it wasn't the intrinsic qualities of the sounds, such as people's shouts and screams, machine gun fire, rhythmic chanting, but the characteristic distribution of vast numbers of events, many different components engaged in a huge choreography, whose movement in space constantly altering in mixture and proportion, which produced a new composite living sound organism.'

Xenakis famously worked as an architect with Le Corbusier on the Philips Pavilion for the Brussels world fair in 1958, before focusing his attention on musical composition. The pavilion was a milestone in architectural thinking and illuminated architecture as a time based phenomenon. ‘In this multi-media environment, two new pieces were performed: Varese's iconic Poeme Electronique; and Xenakis's Concret PH, a short electronic work constructed from the sounds of burning charcoal.  The title refers to the key elements of the building's design, the material of reinforced concrete, and the basic shape of hyperbolic paraboloids.’[Professor Jonathan Cole].

Xenakis’s architecture was dynamic, fluid and temporal. The complex curved surfaces of the pavilion broke down boundaries and echoed the continuous glissandi that were to be so prevalent in his later musical compositions. His musical and orchestral ‘designs’ sought to explore the spatialisation of music and the nature of sound, adopting an inherently architectural approach.  Pieces such as Nomos Gamma, ’67-’68 and Terretektorh ’65-’66 saw 98 orchestral players employed throughout the audience so, in Xenakis’s words ‘A shower of hail or even a murmur of pine forests can encompass each listener.’ [Professor Jonathan Cole].  For me the work of Xenakis goes beyond the usual metaphorical comparisons relating music and architecture. His spatialised music reflects back on our understanding of architecture as being a series of temporal based events.  In turn his architectural approach to musical composition has contributed to a deeper understanding and fascination with the nature of sound.

Homage to the Square - The beginning of Architecture

For me the work of Josef Albers has always been compelling for the perceptual mechanisms it unmasks in our acts of observing it.  The homage to the square series is comprised of literally hundreds of abstract compositions of chromatic interactions. These usually consist of flat squares of colour placed concentrically upon one another.  The optical effects that these simple paintings produce is quite beautiful as well as poignant. Depth, movement and ultimately a sense of space is created through what Albers termed ‘halations’, a result from the simultaneous contrast produced on single flat colour.  

For example in the red square image below we see an orange red hue in the central square with progressively darker / redder hues behind. The halation effect occurs at the edges of these squares, most noticeably, as the middle hue appears both darker and lighter simultaneously. Our eyes begin to spread the colours into one another creating a subtle optical resonance or vibration. The effect intensifies the longer we look as our eyes begin to fatigue.

As architects these paintings have particular significance, as they create a sense of depth and space with such simplicity. The effects are mysterious and sublime and many architects such as Luis Barragans have been deeply influenced by these studies. Halation effects have also been employed in many religious buildings, the Tibetan monastic traditions for example have a highly refined process of colouring walls and surfaces with layer upon layer of differing hues creating spaces that appear to resonate.

The homage to the square series remains a profound insight into the way we see. They do not illuminate the mechanics and physics of vision, but true seeing as Albers describes transcends reason and leads to an awareness of  “the discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect.” These images in a sense point to the very beginning of architecture, not in physical time but in our perceptive faculties.