the charged void

New site

2011-08-04T23:37:00.000+01:00

I've recently put up another website, it's got my recent work from uni and other projects from film rolls to woodwork.

roll on down to www.pendrich.org

Pufleet works

2011-05-11T01:49:00.000+01:00

Abandoned Spaces Society

2011-05-07T22:16:00.000+01:00

game

2011-04-04T23:08:00.000+01:00

Last Friday we I started a word game whereby you turn architects names into womens names.
Such attempts include:

Louise Kahn,
Flora Beigel,
Brenda Tschumi,
Rachel Rogers,
Patricia Schumacher,
and my personal favourite Norma Foster

Continuity and difference

2011-03-18T12:16:00.000Z

Welsh slate

2011-03-02T11:33:00.000Z

Archive - Scandinavia with the Mackie

2011-02-27T12:56:00.000Z

When Architecture gets a delivery, and has an empty gallery

Archive - Notes from Dundee

2011-02-27T12:24:00.000Z

from photo packets circa 2005-2007

Lessons

2011-02-16T11:01:00.000Z

My dear friends Stephen Mackie and Séan McAlister are currently showing their exhibition meta architecture at the gallery space at Lo records hosted by Bradley Lloyd who I first met wearing denim short in dalston superstore (ask me no questions, i tell you no lies). Honestly, it's taken me so long to get round to posting that tonight is the last chance to view, but heck, I sent out emails, posters and chat so far as I can't be blamed for you not knowing!

The aim of the exhibition of drawings, video and sound is to explore how to observe and describe the subjective, perspectival experience of being in space and the subject of a more overarching space, some might say 'urban space' or the blanket term of the city. Two spaces, a Hackney flat and the gallery in which the exhibition hangs, were extensively surveyed and represented in works that both conform and abstract standard architectural drawing conventions in a search for a description of experiencing space. Video collage, a technique developed by the pair, augments the normal postcard view to link to what the eye sees and how one might start to represent ones field of vision. To get closer to the state of existing within the filmed space, much more than panning or panorama can achieve.

Last Thursday they hosted a talk by Lorens Holm, followed by an open discussion. Lorens is both a tutor at Dundee and a more personal mentor to the project, as his latest book did much to continue the strand of research shared by Stephen and Sean. The discussion rose a lot of questions and retorts as those about subjectivity do, but it did reveal and clarify thoughts that were perhaps on the edge of my mind.

It's commendable to see an exhibition of work talking primarily about architectural experience. Although the work consisted of high quality expressive images, the role of the image was not to be held behind glass and paraded as prophetic. Maybe it's coming from humble beginnings but there is an absence of self consciousness, a study not beyond questioning, a study for questioning - inherent in their own curatorial programme - and over all, a means, rather than an end.

This definitely broadcasts a proactive future, and one which no-one can protest is beyond their means. In these cases I do have an uncomfortable feeling when people use the word entrepreneur, as it conjures in me a goal of innate uniformity and that without discourse. Is there another word for this act? ...Just ignore it and carry on.

Oh Quinlan

2011-02-11T19:10:00.000Z

I read

2011-02-09T11:53:00.000Z

that in one bagel there's 10 slices of bread.

recalling 13/11/06, 6/11/06 and 4/12/06

2011-01-31T21:30:00.000Z

I'm going to accompany Holly Wales in the pursuit to get back into life drawing. I used to take advantage of free space in the classes at Duncan of Jordanstone to interrupt my mondays in the architecture studio. Here's hoping some of the memory is still in my fingers.

Scanner with a strop

2011-01-31T17:14:00.000Z

Built Sentiment

2011-01-21T21:30:00.000Z

Over christmas I visited my grandad in Berwick upon Tweed. News over the Christmas holiday was he was to move into sheltered accommodation from the three bedroom house that has been inhabited by my grandparents and 5 children since my Dad was 2 years old. As my grandad leaves the house, the Pendrich name looses the last physical stronghold of at least my living memory. As I've moved around this has always been a constant, and I read into it's departure as akin to the passing of a relative. This will be my last visit.

Control [pt II]

2011-01-17T02:47:00.000Z

Better late than never.

What happens when...

2011-01-16T02:22:00.000Z

sitting in a room of architects, you've just finished your tea, you want to play scabble, but you ain't got a board?

Lost property!

2011-01-09T13:26:00.000Z

This book appeared on the shelf in our toilet the other day, owner unknown.
At first reading it details parallel alternative Scotlands to the one we all know and love. Don't we folks?
If it's yours, it's here. and do tell.

Burn-E

2011-01-04T02:44:00.000Z

Charming, Wall-E sub-story short.

The world as a darkroom

2010-12-25T00:25:00.001Z

Making a trip to Kensington from East London isn't that hard, yet I've only been to the V&A museum twice, first for Lee Miller and last week for the Shadow Catchers exhibition. I forget how impressive the place is.

The exhibition has the subheading of 'camera-less photography' but I can childishly perceive these as primal experiments as testing the discoveries of light sensitive materials and photographic chemicals, coming before the refinement of the camera. The dates tell otherwise. The victorian desire for documentary representation preceded the curiosity of the possibilities of these new materials, replicating the course of painting.

Susan Derges pictograms taken suspended in streams tell more about water movement than other methods can dream of capturing.

Pierre Cordier, inventor of chemigram process, revered and dismissed in both the painting and photographic circles

The posterboy of the show is the captured bodies of Floris Neususs, although the populist choice to put on the poster, they are entirely captivating in person.

Home

2010-12-23T01:14:00.000Z

One time kindred spirit of mine introduced me to the book/film 'into the wild' and nostalgically, I sit watching it's repeat, portraying that joyous sense of new places that one can even get summering in local wildernesses, along with the help of a little childishness. The non-fiction of the last journey of Chris McCandless ultimately shows the perils and poetry of ignorance towards standing on the shoulders of basic travelers knowledge. I'd recommend anyone to watch it, for lessons on indulgent, sentimental filmmaking and naive adventuring.

Control

2010-12-16T11:25:00.000Z

In amongst the events of the past few weeks relating to the future of higher education, I feel I should write something, I know it's not the most exciting, but I'll begin with my take on the policy.

In Vince Cables speech on Thursday all the while we were standing outside, he stated that they various options for addressing the shortfall in funding, those being;

reduce the number of student places - This sounds like an amazing plan. It is likely that this will happen due to the current plans but there are too many people going to University that don't really need or want to. Nobody mentions the drop-out rates. All governments speak that the more people going to university the better, yet no-one speaks why? Is the aim to have the majority of school leavers to go? Surely the task of university is to be a place where the individual and institution are engaging in a certain level of thinking and develop knowledge. I severely doubt that the majority have the capability or inclination to do so. Heavily implying the university route as one of statute for all is a New Labour misconception based on benign equality that ignores the specifics of this situation.

reduce maintenance funds for living costs - Funds that are dispersed via means testing and geared towards support for low income families and that i would dispute.

The situation in Scotland where I studied my first degree greatly differs in the amount of maintenance loan offered, and the figures have altered since I studied, but here are the latest;

Money available from SAAS;
Non-income assessed maximum loan (parents earn over £58,000) -
£915
Income assessed maximum loan (parents don't earn over £58,000) -
£5,067 (tiered up to)
Non-returned grants are paid but reduce the amount of loan you need to take out. Eligible for parents earning under £19,310 up to £34,195)

£2,640 (tiered up to)

Money available from finance England for studying in London;
Non-income assessed maximum loan
£4,988
Income assessed maximum loan - tiered up to
£6,928 (tiered up to)
Non-returned grants are paid and reduce the amount of loan offered by 50p for every £1 of grant. Eligible for parents earning under £25,000 up to £50,000.
£2,906 (tiered up to)

From these you can ascertain that the maximum for low income families is fairly comparable, especially when you take into account the cost of living being cheaper in Scotland, but above the border the money drops pretty steeply for families earning more or not so steep below the border depending on what way you see it.

Based on my circumstances, I received £2,500 loan and I had a part time job earning roughly £5,000 a year. From my experience I had more than some, but we all found ways of living in those means, and it resulted in ingenious solutions of living, studying and enjoying ourselves. From what i've witnessed studying in London, where things are a lot more expensive, I have yet to experience the same level of thrift, concluding that we are being given enough money to accomodate a comfortable lifestyle that we have become acclimatised to whilst earning in our year out.

Introduce a Scottish style graduate fee (now abandoned by the Scottish government)) - This strangely appoints the fee with the issuing of a degree, the condition of not having to invest into the system at the outset omits any rigour from the consideration of studying at university in the first place. One wonders if passing is not statutory for certain professions, then massive factions of students could avoid fees by not finishing, and after the parents have got over missing their child's graduation, people will realise how little the piece of paper matters after all.

the chosen one, charge more tuition fees - The 'progressive' plans are bereft in any sense of direction in which to progress to? The benefactors of university education are the graduate, the state and the private sector through 'increased earning potential', taxes paid by higher earners and skilled and productive workforce respectively. Yet the current proposals assert more cost and therefore imply the benefits on the student. The party line is to state that the taxpayer is footing the bill, repaid over time by graduates*, which is such an idiotic premise that somehow tries to overt that what is being charged to the graduates. At a time not that long ago, the Conservatives issued the dictum that to solve the debts we must act early with strict fiscal programmes. It is a simple fact that the earlier you chip into a savings account the more you benefit through interest accumulation over time. So along with a vast amount of accumulated debt from fees and maintenance, why are we fed the contrary message - one easy to swallow in the short term - that it's all ok, we'll make you pay later*.

*with interest

Overall, my attitude is that a combination of all the above should be adopted, mitigating excessive disadvantages of each of the options, yet turning all the switches and dials of the machine make it more difficult to predict results and a harder sell to a wider incredulous public through it's incompatibility to simple explanation.

This video below was passed to me lately by Holly Wales that is pretty exemplary point about the status of universities position as providers of earnings and waining in their duty to enrich the pool of knowledge in our culture and history. If the changes do anything to the future of higher education it will be to exclude many people from studying but moreover it will extremely diminish avenues of study that offer research in our heritage and limit that study to those who can relinquish £40,000 with little promise of a commercial future. I am aware that attaining a degree is worthwhile for but I'm not sure the state has faith in the .

Regards the marching and the riots, I attended, marched, sang a few songs, did no damage and no harm. Oh and I got stuck in a kettle from til11:15pm. There was relatively little violence until the sun went down, when it escalated and was being taken out on the Treasury building and the swathes of riot police. I can't imagine that the damage was carried out solely by angry students, the police and press surely acknowledge the infiltration of people that seek violence above any cause, the images of the accused released days later do little to alter that assumption.

There are people in the police force on a lot of money that are paid so to deal with the position of high responsibility and I regard their exit strategy as slow and amateurish. I really lambast the process of having continuous failed attempts at aggressively controlling situations and the obligatory investigations that follow, and after the clandestine admissions of wrongdoing there lies no progress on policy, future events or regard for the police. There have been tests in Northern Ireland where police have coordinated supervision of Orange Marches with police dispersed along the crowds in simple uniforms providing successful results, encountering less incidents and of minor harm. Paradoxical solutions are difficult to sell but what happens when you take off the riot gear?

The BBC's stance has been very defensive on the side of the police and the royal family with stories of Alfie Meadows and Jody McIntyre largely interrupted for the violence taken by the police and the 'contact' encountered by Camilla through an (open!) window. I am not asking for a reversal of the stance of the press, just a little closer to impartiality that they advertise.

Photography from the day will soon be added to this post.

I will get back to posting about cool chairs and amateur photographs

Oldies

2010-12-12T13:39:00.000Z

The last post got me looking at old photographs when i first bought my first analogue camera. Badly scanned but you get the picture.

for Patrick

2010-12-12T03:56:00.000Z

Anti-nuclear weapons march, Glasgow, circa 2007

the beautification of building components for climatic control

2010-11-27T14:53:00.000Z

The easiest method of unraveling solutions to building habitable environments in any country is to look at how the locals built, or at least how they once built. Slow advances in construction and the limitations of pre-globalised economies mould the vernacular in a way that always allowed for climate control via local means. The new constructions of the twentieth century brought unparalleled scales and densities using imported materials (wherever the buildings may have been) that subsequently demand intensive ventilation, heating and air conditioning not helped by the modern preoccupation with transparency.

We are seeing a resurgence in the appropriation of vernacular elements as well as new methods of non-assisted control but these aren't always holistically designed and often bolt on products. Wind cowls, brise soleil and other such items often appear as composite in their physical addition as one could perceive their cohesive integration during the design process.

A recent applied technology project required our team to produce an aid storage facility in Hyderabad, Pakistan. One look at a picture from 1890 tells quite a lot about how they deal with the heat.

When making a windcatcher using the same set of parts and junctions as the main structure, a cohesive arrangement appears to emerge.

One should ask when the designers are going to start playing with these parts of buildings? Tom Dixon cowls? Ron Arad brise soleil? I joke, but the real task is for these to be integrated with the composition of all the other building elements, which is harder with the removal of services and sustainability design from the architects responsibility and into the hands of specialists. Specialists without our concerns.

the best way to find out how something works

2010-11-14T20:25:00.000Z

Last night i destroyed a book which felt in some way blasphemous, but it was in the name of discovering how books are constructed. This act was prompted by the inadequate resources found on the net, only finding awfully presented american websites and bookbinding equipment suppliers.

The book in question was The Trachtenberg Speed System of Basic Mathematics which was acquired from a trip around the house of the mole manof hackney, a man of local folklore, who once lived at 121 Mortimer Road at which he created an underground network of tunnels without any from of reason other than the extension of his wine cellar. Since then he has fled the house, been fined, the tunnels filled with concrete by the council and earlier this year he died. I would suggest to anyone to google him and I'm sure Ian Sinclair writes about him. Passing the house recently I noticed the roof has collapsed and will continue to fade from existence. Much like the book.

After crudely pulling various layers apart, I realised the intricacies of the objects would not reveal itself, so from then the forced decay proceeded through a more methodical removal and proved somewhat calming.

This new understanding will result in the production of a book.
Don't expect a novel, but expect.

release

2010-11-12T23:28:00.000Z

I remember corresponding with Rachel Farricker - the editor of this new book, Pennine Lancashire Squared - about Neu Architects contribution as winner of the Bacup square, but i always assumed it would be confined to a small circulation and I have been thankfully corrected. Hopefully its inclusion in the RIBA bookstore will raise the presence of the competition and the practice. Go NEU!

back in the day

2010-11-06T13:05:00.001Z

At a talk at this years Serpentine Pavillion, this kid had the most inexhaustible interest in an injured bee and had no fear of letting it dance around in his hand, superpowers obviously! The little man proved to be pictured more than this years evidently photogenic pavillion.

film roll returns

2010-11-06T12:56:00.000Z

Lonely perfect intruder

2010-10-04T23:09:00.000+01:00

This melancholic box came around to check your security. You weren't home so he broke in!

So i'm gonna say it...

2010-10-04T14:52:00.000+01:00

I propose that Zaha Hadid won the Stirling Prize because it was "her turn".

The title of the award winning building is to be one that "gives the greatest contribution to British architecture in that year". Initially I can't see how many foreign projects can have a vivid impact on the state of play back on this island, and results in the reading of the project through plans and a limited number of choreographed photos. I ask how much influence can that have on a young student or the average architect flicking through pages of the Architects Journal? Or whether it produces a valuable influence beyond the visual treat that can be used to foster seeds of thought back in Britain? Without visiting I would judge that it's not her best stirling entry, her transformative and directional formality I thought married to the BMW factory programme with effortless cooperation, but that it might be the last of her buildings completed in the heavy, shifting rectilinear family as the newer fluid methods have gained favour in her office.

Evidently Zaha thrives in our ocular-centric culture and she has been met warmly by an artistic community that see a tangible riot of expression in her forms that stir more in some people than the subtle wit of dutch rationalist brick details. My eyes are still swayed, but I find more interest in her small scale items. Their purity of her language shines and overrides my distaste for the ostentation of superfluous gestures and at times vapid programmes. Who knows what it teaches us that the most important building of the year is devoted to a collection that has yet to be even set into gestation. This is still an artefact of an era where high art and it's gestures are held in the highest regard, able to disregard social agendas, urban contexts and the boundaries of economic means.

A very closed circle appears to be taking shape in amongst the upper echelons of the architectural crowd. With awards, jury positions, serpentine pavilions and curation roles swapping to and fro like classroom notes amongst friends. This isn't to denounce their talent, my question is to ask whether that talent is so concentrated within the pool of the worlds young and established practitioners?

Amanda Bailieu belated in her blog the lack of overt voting or discussion between the judges or infact anyone in the programme featured on the BBC. Would it be the worst thing in the world to have an argument on TV? Where are the caricatures? Architecture is big enough to have violent opposing sides! There are heated critiques and debates in the colleges across the country yet there is polite fence sitting at the top? Do we need to invite Will Alsop to get things stirred up?

Designing for overt opportunities

2010-02-23T00:05:00.000Z

AA series from HC Wang

Pennine triumphs

2009-12-02T20:44:00.000Z

So after a long time under the floorboards, Neu Architect's competition win in Bacup has finally been announced and broadcast to the architectural broadsheets here and here.

These Lowry-esque images show our peppering of improvements linked to local historical references, winking in the direction of knowledge that is slowly disappearing. Although i did want to do something so very sinister and awkward as this is League of Gentlemen country.

Regeneration, but not as we know it!

2009-11-29T03:09:00.000Z

The last thing I remember about Nottingham was being driven to school by my dad in the back of army land rovers, but the place has far since from moved on from rogue fathers and that time my neightbours car was set on fire, or at least i hope so. Basically what i'm trying to say is Nottingham has a new centre for contemporary arts that finished a few weeks ago by London-based Caruso St John.

Tom Dyckoff talked on the culture show about it being a move of recession styled architecture, but really this sounds like he's never seen a Caruso St John building before, This is much more than current penchant for shabby-chic. They've always made buildings in this vein. They have always been in search of an architecture of a contingent nature, they thrive in the found space, the residual charged space that forever carries the baggage of life and years. They leave these places touched by marks that are formally and historically cohesive to themselves, avoiding the contrast of new and old they aim to continue past moves and play the games of expression and suppression. Obviously this game is much more difficult with a blank site, and no existing fabric to play with, but they manage to pull off spaces that possess the familarity and chance similar to that found in abandoned houses or factories. It bodes well that the team organising Nottingham CCA have pushed the extent the project to bring a wholeness that connects curation, architecture, product, food and graphics.

They lock at odds with the wider architectural community, creating buildings that relate to people at a tangible scale and that are locally legible yet complex enough to avoid a catchphrase silhouette.

Wood

2009-11-22T19:44:00.000Z

I've enlisted in a carpentry course at London Met, and I'm halfway through a small cabinet which belongs in the bathroom of a mean hermit or something. but i've worryingly gained an interest in historic fine furniture, purely on the grounds that i now know it takes hours to complete a dovetail.

Dare studio do a good job at tapping into the inner georgian gentlemen in all of us, (right guys) that make you want to sit and write a novella inspired by that favourite buxom manor muse you oh so devilshly desire.

Japanese outfit Nendo made this freak of a chair, its fragility is untrustworthy like a skinny food critic, but we all know we would participate in the old school pastime of the "lean back". The simple and slight deserted chair is synonymous with japanese architectural ~~pornography~~ photography and these guys really set illusions to see how much they can hide.

Their fadeout chair too!

and also "I am the new Jesus!"

Analogue Astronomy

2009-11-13T17:17:00.001Z

Fantastic posters from the depths of a time capsule by Simon Page take me back to the days Kubrick, if I was alive, and the tones of unloved seventies maths textbooks.

Patience in the turbine hall

2009-11-04T01:53:00.000Z

Good things come to those who wait, or an audience with Demand and Caruso. The projects they showed give the image they both operate on each others terms. Working for, rather than working with, which has to be better form of collaboration for clarity of vision. I don't approve of design by half measures.

The craftsmanship of Demands models are amazing and the off-kilter photorealism sets about memory triggers and connotations of a tangible inhabitance. The evidence of the human presence is inexplicably linked to these pictures. They charge stories in the mind and feature as sets in our head-dramas.

The Nagelhaus (two bottom pictures) is constructed from a concoction of modern references that exist in film and on the pixel-deep online space. This removed third person layered experience from a distance allows for the bending of truth like a massive chinese whisper/photo/copy/paste. I find Caruso St Johns classical winks so charming that they pass far beyond pastiche, usually handled with their own colour palettes and touch that is something on the odd side of quintisential english.

The other Arne

2009-10-31T02:15:00.000Z

I see within some designers a move towards purist structural honesty, the clean surface of modernism has been violently frayed and pulled inside out to show the chaotic innards. These pallettes have to be limited and concept to be clear to avoid pomo catastrophe. Welsh design outfit Freshwest taps right into the juvenile toybox with these pieces both titled brave new world.

Arne Quinze also flirts with the auto-didactic craftsman with his sprawling parasitic sculptures that dart like inkstokes over buildings and the sky. I like his models though.

Which leads me to these shoes I built for our very own debonair girl Camille Roman's label Tour de Force. This was a fun maquette which made me realise how long it had been since i had made a model. Literally made on a shoestring (with a bit of an old wooden pallet) it was a bizarre construct that constantly contorted every time i returned to work at it, shifting like original lumber. I don't think i've ever seen anything i've done in a more professional surrounding.

In celluloid we trust

2009-10-12T20:37:00.000+01:00

Werner Herzog, the bastion of guerilla film-making, has announced the opening of a rogue film school. i believe this will create some obscure stories on the net about arrests in cambodia or deaths in the underground caves of prague. Here's hoping.

And there should be some cool films emerge afterwards.

The talent of the Irish

2009-08-22T20:44:00.000+01:00

Not much get said about the new Irish kids over here, they don't really get included in competitions and literature as much. I somehow doubt that really matters the Irish sense of pride and independence but their young practices like O'Donnell and Tuomey, ODOS, Cast, Ozmin, A2 etc can rip it up like the Lynch's and Carmody Groarkes over this side of the channel.

Here is the work of Taka, formed by a pair of Irish women in Bangladesh, which explains the brick patternings, and have already done work for the Venice Biennale. House 1 and 2 shows a structural ambiguity, sturdy lightness with Victorian sensibility in the celebration of the vintage decoration and the taste for using imported flavours from their travels.

Humble space geometries

2009-08-21T14:22:00.000+01:00

Designed with Gaudis method of hanging chains in search of the perfect natural geometries.

Gaudi chair from Dutch student Bram Geenen.

Intertwinning

2009-08-17T23:07:00.000+01:00

Travelled to finland and broke all of the non-judgements I had of the place. I mostly only captured photos in Helsinki, otherwise i was too occupied by fondling moonbeams and breast-stroking through waters. After rushing past the strangely ordinary Kamppi Center by Juhani Pallasmaa - from a quick walk through i couldn't gauge how it had much relevance to his theories on architecture and the senses - i came to Kiasma which feels like it has been put together by one man, sculpting away for about 40 years. For a big building it remains continuously tactile as everything you touch transfers a sense of hours. Each piece of brass marked with a thousand prints.

and the babies get to sit in tim burton diy high chairs!

Happy Chinese New Year!!

2009-02-11T09:53:00.001Z

Well TVCC by OMA, has been lit up like a tinderbox just a few months before its opening. These images and you could be forgiven for thinking it was part of some elaborate fireworks show, and theres still a doubt in my head that this is still a hoax as part of a competition to create a believable disaster and some pro-china sympathy. These things come across too comic and plastic to me and of a scale too vast to register with a tangible heartfelt response.9/11 - the comic was confidently apt way to tell the story, thats if i go out and read it.

The charred headstone is more blunt rather than a pile of post-cremation ashes and points a knife to the face of progress. Wonder what Rem Koolhaas has to say on the matter?

Sleeping on the job

2009-02-01T13:43:00.000Z

Last night pick off the cellophane from a dvd that has been sitting in my room since my friend gifted me this before she flew from the nest to conquer teaching rich korean brats back in december 2007 (ouch). the film, heart of glass from ol' Werner Herzog, left so much of an impression on me i felt guilty it stayed in the plastic that long, and for spending time watching films like "Wanted" or "The day the earth stood still", but how was i to know.

The story originates from a collection of bavarian, german, swiss and czech locations and folklore, show a village crumble under the strain, when the keeper of the secret formula for their ruby glass dies. The glass factory; aimless and leaderless collapses and tugs the pockets and minds of the village into bewilderment, through the typical stages of denial, contempt, remorse and submission.

I can remember reading that the cast were hypnotised but in watching the film i had completely forgotten, and so wandered into the unsober events blind. the film starts with herzog mesmorising the eye with potent and stylised views of a Bavarian landscape, denial of zoning out is not an option. to have a film where the cast acted, and also sometimes wrote, towards the film under hypnosis, is clearly going beyond the call of duty, but what comes from that is a film that is so unwavering it is impossible not to get lost in it.

Hias plays the only sober unwavering voice in the film. His visions, predictions and actions of the future have a clarity and purpose which stays true amongst all the hazy chaos that blindly ensues.

The landscapes feature always put me in memory of casper david friedrich paintings.

(that one made a fellow painter friend drop his brush and train as an architect due to his disbelief in even approaching caspers unattainable greatness)

And the end of the film leaves a touch of hope that is also somewhat blind, especailly considering the ominous predictions of the local Nostradamus.

Artists take on architecture

2008-12-21T21:05:00.000Z

Some sunday in august, i think, i took my bike with my friends to the south bank and waited behind around 30 to get inside the hayward, we were also harassed, or interacted with, by some youth theatre company sweeping and cleaning us. I was hopeful for this exhibition, considering there are a lot of artists that have a strong architectural sensibility in their work.

The first thing you see is ernesto neto's work which looks playful and is filled with smells of christmas and citrus. This sits in the middle of the space and looks like it could be pulled from another one of his exhibitions, and although you can - and cannot refrain to - walk through the notice of "do not touch" changes your attention from absorbing yourself in the work to watching where your hands are. This denial of the sense of touch does not do much to heighten the experience of others but frustrate your curiosity and deny the possibility of texture/smell/vision association.

Other pieces focused on the issue of scale; two dolls houses colliding into each other, a collection of 200 of rachel whitereads dollhouses and a paper mache 1:1 playhouse.
Atelier bow-wow's introduction is probably the most engaging of the lot, which inserts a metallic cave structure to connect three levels, two by level by scrambiling through the tight and low tunnel and also by sight and sound upwards through the tunnel that winds its way up in the gaps in the stairwell. It creates something from a mostly redundant space in the gallery like the nest of a metallic insect.

And as for the boating lake on the roof thats another matter; after i've waited some time to get inside the exhibition, i really don't expect to wait another three times inside the gallery for various events -mini-cinema, boating lake, geodesic dome- i don't really care how they would sort it out, let people wait longer outside, etc its just frustrating after you pay your money to have to wait repeatedly, i know we're british and supposedly love that shit but its just not my thing.

Overall i still see the artists looking at their work very protectively and reluctant to engage with the public other than just an observer, there were some good ideas but i could not get over the distance that they put infront of their work, and the arrogance that comes with "taking on architecture" and producing a show which looks like they haven't changed their perspective to tackle the subject of architecture.

Christopher Pendrich vs Cristobal Palma

2008-11-14T00:25:00.000Z

Pretty ghetto

2008-11-13T23:37:00.000Z

Cristobal Palma's photos of Quinta Monroy, project from Chilian architect Alejandro Aravena

loving the 'what you see is what you get' nature of the scheme, obviously built on a shoestring, but also with leftover room for ad-hoc additions when the homes family or money circumstances change. These shantyesque inserts put individual stamps into the neighbourhood and fit into the holes intentionally left by Aravena, so doesn't harm the overall legibility of the place, which would usually happen in this kind of environment.

ps. I wish we could pull these colours off

2008-10-25T02:28:00.000+01:00

First

2008-10-25T01:50:00.000+01:00

Not a marvel, but a small and cheap project from one of my favourites, Caruso St John.