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 extensive : intensive

extensive : intensive
edited by Christoph Lueder
extensive : intensive

Christoph Lueder: We started off by things on the board, showing PowerPoint’s

chatting about our experience of the and hoping to start a dialogue. It was
school, about when we all first arrived to different in diploma school. There was
a situation we inherited. That meant for me no frontal situation, instead we found a
a lot of teaching involved lecturing to large small room, Allan and I sat around a table
numbers of students from a podium, trying with the students and that was actually
to somehow engage them by drawing quite a good start.
Allan Atlee: That’s right and what was
really distinct about it was that the diploma
students had a project under way and
someone pulled the rug out from under
them and I think that revealed that there
was a way of learning and teaching
architecture at the school which was based
on incremental permission to make
certain steps, that you had permission now
to do a certain drawing or now to think
about construction. There was no sense
of self-awareness on the student’s part of
design process or a way of working with
methodology and I think what Christoph
has done collaboratively – and on his own
at times – has been about process and
about exposing students to a methodology
supporting their working process. When
we met in the room all those months
ago, the phrasing that you used was the
difference between teaching as a process
of filling a bucket or lighting a fire – and
that was probably why we got on – and it
is much more important to light fires and
get to a point where students become aware
of their own process. That is a common
theme across different exercises that we
are going to look at, and probably the role
that diagram can play in process is probably
quite a common feature as well, so I think
that that may be a theme we can pick up on.
Oren Lieberman: I think that before we
get to that, there are a couple of things
I want to pick up on. One has to do with
a basic methodology – the old thing of
‘let the student do the learning’ where
sometimes it is quite good not to teach
as much. As far as methodology goes, we
extensive : intensive
edited by Christoph Lueder
First published in 2008 Acknowledgments
by circulating objects and The author wishes to thank the
CSA – Canterbury School following: John Bell, Hocine
of Architecture Bougdah, Peter Chipchase,
University College for Oliver Froome-Lewis, Ephraim
the Creative Arts Joris, and Kristina Kotov for
New Dover Road their input as colleagues and
Canterbury CT1 3AN critics at CSA.
www.ucreative.ac.uk
Distributed by
Cornerhouse
70 Oxford Street
Manchester M15 5NH
www.cornerhouse.org
Texts/images © 2008 as noted
or the authors
For the book in this form © 2008
circulating objects and CSA –
Canterbury School of Architecture
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording or
any other information storage
or retrieval system, without
prior permission in writing from
the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-
Publication Data
A catalogue record of this book is
available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-9558225-0-6
Co-ordination and editorial
supervision: Christoph Lueder
circulating objects series
editor: Oren Lieberman
Design: www.marit.co.uk
Print: Lecturis
 Extensive : Intensive
Oren Lieberman
Drawing on Deleuze, the concept of extensive / intensive is used by
Christoph Lueder in this book as a framing device: diagrams of practitioners,
academicians, and students are used, interpreted, and made through it.
Both the notion of extensive / intensive and the diagram itself – and how they
modulate our reading and practice of space – are useful to further explicate
circulating objects.
Some expressions of such objects reside in their ‘metrological’
durability, their extensions as objects in relationships to, and bounded by,
other objects. At the same time, these objects, as relationships, continuously
shift, creating/expressing zones of intensity (Deleuze). In their travels, these
publications, still extensively delimited by the body that is Canterbury School
of Architecture, may produce debate, discussion, dialogue. These intensities
are processes that continuously renegotiate, and indeed recreate, those
extensive limits.
And, as diagrams (which are also examples of the index), these
circulating objects represent as well as transform: they set and establish
a perspective, a viewpoint, a frame, an agenda – diagnosing and stating
a position – and are performative in their agency to create something
different. Again, as representational tools, diagrams – like circulating objects
– enable us to communicate with ourselves and others about what, and how,
we are thinking and making; at the same time, as parts of our distributed
cognitive apparatus, they think and make us.
A note on circulating objects
The title ‘circulating objects’ refers to an array of produce, which, reaching
some critical mass, might be seen as a collection of associated things.
On the one hand it assembles them together to form a growing ‘body’
of work associated with, and disseminated by, the Canterbury School of
Architecture; at the same time, it names them clearly as what they are:
things which circulate and trace their own biographies. Of course, any
book, catalogue, pamphlet, image, DVD, etc. is some thing placed in
circulation, and formulates itself through its relations with other things.
However, by entitling this assemblage of works ‘circulating objects’ one
of those relationships is already sketched out, i.e., a desire for the possible
reception of the works as actors (or, more precisely, actants) in circulation.
Circulating objects – or quasi-objects (Serres) or circulating references
(Latour) – tangle themselves through their travels. As both things and
pointers, they are indexes par excellence. But indexes are not passive:
they are performative, inducing us to create their histories and futures.
These objects, these ‘immutable mobiles’ (Latour), produce as well as
transmit meaning: they constitute cultures of circulation (Lee and LiPuma).
These artefacts are structured, and ‘immutable’ or durable, through their
relationships to the Canterbury School of Architecture, be they products
of students, staff, or individuals or groups associated with the school.
At the same time, they are not bounded by this relationship, and extend,
and circulate beyond, the imprint.
 Diagramming Extensive and Intensive Space
Christoph Lueder
An abundance of personal experience and cultural backgrounds is
continually injected into architecture schools by students. A model of study
emphasizing emulation of exemplary buildings, which Frank Gehry 1 has
described as ‘mimetic’, risks suppressing much of that anarchic potential.
But, as students will be prone to imitate what they have seen designed,
rather than designing with what they have seen, the challenge remains to
set up situations which enable students to become conscious, critical and
articulate about their experience and design process.
An influential precedent was set by John Hejduk at the University
of Texas at Austin with the Nine-Square-Grid design problem . Initialized
2
by formal constraints, the exercise provided a platform for experimentation
and linkage with contemporary architecture and art theory.
While the ‘formalist’ approach provided an essential alternative to
the ‘functionalist’ canon inspired by the Bauhaus and installed at Harvard
by Walter Gropius , its reliance on the diagram as a pedagogic tool has
3
been criticised for its emphasis on abstraction and perceived exclusion of
materiality, physical and social context. Kenneth Frampton 4 has called for
a renewed emphasis on tectonics, typology and topology.
This paper will explore an alternate route, a reconsideration of the
diagram as ‘architecture’s best means to engage the complexity of the real’ . 5
Diagrams and notations can be tools for spatial investigation, for
ways of seeing, and for conceiving and communicating a thesis. I will try
to describe diagrams not only as acts of spatial representation, but also
as tools for simulation of processes and as instruments of discourse.
Gilles Deleuze’s distinction between intensive and extensive space
will be instrumental; notions of striated and smooth space, the structural
notions of tree (strata) and rhizome (self-consistent aggregates) might
provide further background 6, but I will not present a consistent application
of Deleuzian thought to pedagogy.
Space
‘The word space is a blanket term for many different types of space: exterior
and interior space, intermediate space, the space surrounding an object or a
person, mathematical space, geometrical and harmonious space, visual and
acoustic space, space that can be perceived by touch and smell, functional
space, symbolic space and many other types of space. In buildings of the
past, the many types of space listed were normally condensed into a single
room. This was because space was normally only created between the load
bearing walls, the ceiling and the floor. The visual, acoustic, geometrical,
accessible, touchable etc. types of space all ended at the inside of the wall
and the arch. The result was simple, strong, monumental types of space
which were nevertheless constricted and which could not be opened up
in reality. They could only be opened up transcendentally, with an image
of the Redeemer in the cupola, for example.’ Günter Behnisch 7
In the architecture of Behnisch and Partners, these preoccupations
seem to have been translated into a layered overlay of spatial boundaries
and ambiguous transitions between inside and outside.
A related argument has been made by Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky
in their essay ‘Transparency, literal and phenomenal’ 8. Reading certain cubist
paintings as diagrams of a particular type of architectural space, they identify
a condition of phenomenal transparency, of being in several spaces
simultaneously. But all of these spaces and spatial notions are enclosures;
they are defined by various types of implicit and explicit boundaries.
In contrast, Behnisch’s enumeration of spatial types, many of which
can be experienced in open landscape, can not all be defined as enclosures.
For some of these spatial types only diffuse boundaries can be assumed, other
types might not lend themselves to definition by extent and boundary at all.
 all came in different ways to this place
with a perspective of looking through
things to think in different ways. That was
indeed the thing that I was interviewed
on: ‘what is going to be your relationship
with Fine Art?’, and it was not about
making architects into fine artists, but
Manuel DeLanda 9 explains a fundamental distinction between
looking through different methods and
extensive and intensive space made by Gilles Deleuze. Extensive space is
methodologies in order to think about
‘bounded by natural and artificial extensive boundaries’, whereas intensive
your own discipline differently.
space is characterized by ‘zones of intensity’. While extensive quantities such
as volume, area and length are additive, intensive quantities such as density, CL: Probably one of the two main starting
pressure, temperature and connectivity are recognized by Deleuze as points from a conversation with Oren was
‘indivisible’. Simply put, a gallon of water can be divided in extension, but Frank Gilbreth, Perfect Alexander Klein the idea of looking through the lens of
Movement, (of a hand) M. Reijot Varembé
the two parts will not each have half the temperature. Deleuze borrows the wire model, 1912
one discipline at another – however that
actually is done on the ground. The
distinction between extensive and intensive from physics, specifically from
other one was giving every member of
thermodynamics. In contrast to 19 th century thermodynamics’ focus on points as origins and destinations of
staff different ‘hats’ to wear, so a history
a final equilibrium state and the notion of entropy, the modern branch of movement or flow of forces. These diagrams
teacher would also be doing design
‘far-from-equilibrium-thermodynamics’ studies systems that are traversed can paraphrase and explain natural or man-
tutoring, a ‘critical theory’ guy could have
by flows of matter or energy and maintain zones of different intensity. made topography, such as rivers or roads, important input into construction. Oren’s
Difference drives such systems. but also three-dimensional structures, such notion of the human body as a measuring
as bone tissue at a microscopic scale. Here, instrument brings disciplines together. It
Connectivity the diagram provides a tool for abstraction is remarkable that a lot of these notations

and understanding, but also for simulation in retrospect now seem to be about the

of morphology and process. Frei Otto’s human body in different conditions. They
In its close association with the key notions of difference and flow,
are looking at processes in time, people
‘connectivity’ seems an auspicious choice for a survey of an ‘intensive’ quantity IL-Institute at the University of Stuttgart
moving about in space and at conditions
and quality of space. has used ‘material diagrams’ made from
as they are perceived by these people.
Alexander Klein’s 10 house typologies and diagrams of movement wet wool threads, for example, to simulate
There was a rather rigid framework saying
and views come to mind as an early attempt to diagram connectivity. But structures. Frei Otto’s diagrams validate you’ve got to identify environmental
invariably, and in contrast to studies pursued by E. J. Maray 11 and Frank his hypothesis on self-organizing structure parameters, there’s got to be a key, there’s
Gilbreth12 at different scales, Klein’s diagrams are a function of boundaries in both topography and three-dimensional got to be an explanation, and yet the
and enclosures: views are framed by apertures; paths are defined by rooms form. Performative and generative drawings appear somewhat intuitive.

and doors. processes are identified as authors of form,

AA: I am interested in the question of
Frei Otto’s diagrams 13 of ‘systems of direct roads’, ‘minimum road and need to be recognized as such in the
professionalism and amateurism and the
systems’, and ‘networks of minimal detours’ and the ‘generative system’ process of design.
idea that there is some advantage to be
do not assume any enclosure a priori, but rather emerge from a series of
gained by remaining one foot – if not
 both feet – within the amateur camp. And
that allows you to avoid adopting the
‘professional codes’ and the languages of
a certain professionalism. I think what
these environmental notations do is allow
students to come at the subject with no
authorised language so there is no need for
them to use conventional representation
or conventional form of notation and they
are encouraged to devise their own. All
they are encouraged to do is to understand
the principle of notation and you’d hope
Minimum road system Network of minimal detours Spongiosa bone that would allow students to take a critical
position in relation to the authoritative
language of official forms of coding.
OL: I think that’s right – it is not only asking
students to critically question those
authoritative languages through another way
of making, but it is also stating that the
conventional notation of architecture and
interiors doesn’t expose qualities of space
which are much more about the sensual
experience and the bodily experience.
Yes indeed it helps the student critique –
whether they know it at the time or not – the
conventional and the authority of that. It also

Based on his initial application of mathematical set theory to the process

of design in his ‘Notes on the Synthesis of Form’, Christopher Alexander 14 then
proposes a diagrammatic reading of urban structure in ‘The City is not a Tree’.
Alexander contrasts the ‘tree’ and the ‘semi-lattice’ as alternative structural
models of cities in terms of their connectivity and their potential for spatial and
social overlap, which is greater in the case of the semi-lattice.
Alexander demonstrates that tree-like structures are easier to
categorize and perceive than semi-lattices, and that therefore tree structures
are underlying most modern and contemporary urban planning. Thus, a
perceptual operation or ‘mental diagram’ takes on an agency of its own
and ceases to be solely an instrument of analysis and abstraction.
from its antithesis, the ‘ladder’. Pope integrates this ‘performative’ reading of
the grid with perceptual qualities of the grid as diagram, such as the distinction
between ‘centrifugal’ and ‘centripetal’ grid readings first identified by Rosalind
Kraus s16 in modernist paintings. Performative and perceptual forces are
demonstrated to be agents reconfiguring the grid / ladder as a hybrid and
volatile structure and space.

Tree Semi-lattice Grid Ladder Hybrid

The grid becomes a game board in Albert Pope’s investigation
and diagrammatic simulation of the American city published under the title
‘Ladders’ . The concept of redundancy, the capacity of the grid to allow
15
more than one route between given points is identified as a quality lacking
This prefatory and necessarily incomplete survey casts a spotlight
on the potential of diagrams, when not reduced to de-materialized plans or
sections, to set up original modes of operation and perception. Interestingly,
the ‘mechanics’ of perception apply to both space and diagram.
 The diagram’s capacity to abstract and simulate process, but also to
initialize dynamic mental percepts, make it indispensable for understanding
spatial structure ‘far from equilibrium’.
Percept
Rudolf Arnheim 17
predicates his model of human perception on
concepts of physics. In ‘Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative
Eye’, he defines a vocabulary of ‘perceptual forces’, such as ‘balance’,
‘growth’, ‘movement’, ‘tension’ and ‘dynamics’ instrumental in the forming of
‘perceptual constructs’ and ‘percepts’. These ‘perceptual forces’ are derived
from physics, and even encourage comparison to Frei Otto’s notions on
forces. However, Arnheim’s conclusion re-affirms the agency of the author.
‘Expression is the crowning aspiration of all perceptual categories. It is the
statement to which they all contribute by arousing visual tension.’
Rudolf Arnheim, ‘Structural map’ of the
perception of a square
Qualifying that position somewhat, in his essay ‘Art and Entropy’ 18,
Arnheim establishes an explicit analogy to thermodynamics:
‘ The increase of entropy is due to two quite different kinds of effect; on
the one hand, a striving toward simplicity, which will promote orderliness
and the lowering of the level of order, and, on the other hand, disorderly
destruction. Both lead to tension reduction. The two phenomena manifest
themselves more clearly the less they are modified by the ountertendency,
namely, the anabolic establishment of a structural theme, which introduces
and maintains tension. It was noted that freely interacting natural forces
strive towards a state of equilibrium, which represents the final order of
the constellation. Such a final state, at which all is well, is also foreseen by
philosophers, social reformers, therapists. But perfection, being a standstill,
has often been viewed with justified discomfort, and the definitive order
of utopias and heavens smacks inevitably of boredom.’
This statement can be read to prefigure the case for far-from-equilibrium
thermodynamics and Deleuze’s interest in difference. In contrast to the Deleuzian
notion of an abstract (diagrammatic) machine actualizing virtual space, Arnheim
refers to the interaction of mental percepts with visible diagrams. Further
observations on the relationship between Gestalt psychology and entropy
have been made by Rosalind Krauss 19.
Student work
Student projects are presented as work in their own right; some of
them may contribute to academic discourse from a fresh angle.
Structural Analogies are initialized by a topographical formation
selected by students from Google Earth, which is diagrammed 2D and then
transposed to a 3D model. The process implies an emphasis on structure and
connectivity, but has evolved and been much augmented by student responses
to the brief with notions of assembly, re-configuration and performance.
 Environmental Notations are informed by Reyner Banham’s distinction 20
between ‘environmental aids of the structural type’ and ‘power-operated
solutions’.
diagrams and microscopic images re-read as diagrams and then physically
enacted by making and constructing three-dimensional material diagrams.
The potential of the ‘material diagram’ for abstracting, but also
for simulating process, is explored.
The diagram as a thinking tool is introduced through clearly defined
‘exercises’, but aspires to help build a platform for the broadest and most
open discourse possible.

R. Banham: Environmental Environmental conditions References

behaviour of a tent around a camp fire
Intensive parameters, such as density, pressure, temperature, sound,
noise, wind, humidity are notated, using the human body both as measuring
instrument as well as active agent in making and performing space.
Pacific wind and streamline Lucinda Childs : Melody Peter Zimovieff : December
map Exerpt, dance score Hollow, musical score
Synthesis has emerged as a common concern of much of the work,
overlaying diagrams originating from science, such as weather maps or
daylight diagrams with maps of events, dance and music notations. The
gamut of intensive quantities and qualities is expanded beyond connectivity.
Porosity contributes to a discourse on ‘material diagrams’. Performance
as a generator of form is investigated through transpositions 21 of science
1 Frank Gehry quoted in: Arnell, Peter and Ted Bickford,
eds. Frank Gehry: Buildings and Projects,
p. 24, New York: Rizzoli, 1985.
2 John Hejduk: Mask of Medusa, 1985, see also:
R.E. Somol: Dummy Text, or The Diagrammatic Basis
of Contemporary Architecture, in: Diagram Diaries,
New York, 1999
3 For a critique of the Harvard model see: Klaus Herdeg:
The Decorated Diagram: Harvard Architecture and
the Failure of the Bauhaus Legacy, MIT Press, 1985
4 Kenneth Frampton: ‘Reflections on the Autonomy of
Architecture: A Critique of Contemporary Production’,
in Out of Site: A Social Criticism of Architecture,
ed. Ghirardo, Seattle Bay Press, 1991 and ‘Studies
in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction
in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture’,
MIT Press, 1995
5 Stan Allen: Diagrams Matter, in: ANY 23: Diagram
Work: Data Mechanics for a Topological Age, Anyone
Corporation, New York, 1998
6 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: A Thousand
Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, University
of Minnesota Press, 1987
7 Guenter Behnisch, in: Behnisch & Partners, Designs
1952 – 1987
8 Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky: Transparency, Literal
and Phenomenal, Perspecta 8, 1964
9 Manuel DeLanda: Space: Extensive and Intensive,
Actual and Virtual, in: Deleuze and Space, Edinburgh
University Press, 2005
10 Alexander Klein: Das Einfamilienhaus, Südtyp.
Studien und Entwürfe mit grundsätzlichen
Betrachtungen, Stuttgart 1934
11 Étienne Jules Marey : Le mouvement. G. Masson,
Paris, 1894
12 Frank Gilbreth: Applied motion study, 1917
13 IL 24: Form Force Mass 4 – Lightweight Principle,
Expense and optimisation of structural elements
and structures. The BIC-Lambda-Method, Stuttgart
14 Christopher Alexander: A City is not a Tree, from
Thackara, J, Design After Modernism: Beyond the
Object, Thames and Hudson, London, 1988, pp. 67–84
15 Albert Pope: Ladders, Princeton Architectural Press, 1997
16 Rosalind Krauss: ‘Grids’, in: The originality of the
Avant-Garde and other Modernist Myths, pp. 9–22,
MIT Press, 1985
17 Rudolf Arnheim: Art and Visual Perception: A
Psychology of the Creative Eye, University of
California Press, 1974
18 Rudolf Arnheim: Entropy and Art: An Essay on
Disorder and Order, University of California Press, 1974
19 Rosalind Krauss: Entropy, Gestalt, Horizontality, in:
Yves-Alain Bois, Rosalind Krauss, Formless, A User’s
Guide, New York, 1997
20 Reyner Banham: The Architecture of the Well-
Tempered Environment, 1969
21 For an elaboration of ‘transposition’ as design
strategy, see: Stan Allen: Diagrams Matter 5 and
Friedrich Kittler: Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900,
Munich, 1985 and 2003
Objective environmental notation

Notation of and thinking about:

1. ‘objective’ environmental parameters in connection with ‘subjective’ aural, visual,

haptic and other experiences made while investigating and experiencing the site
– wind force, direction, clouds, temperature, light, sound, cries of seagulls, etc.
Both quantitative as well as qualitative aspects of these parameters and experiences
are important: e.g. daylight vs. sunlight, noise vs. sound, light over time, heat radiation
vs. convection, etc.

2. patterns of human occupation and movement

Drawing styles and patterns recording, interpreting and explaining human occupation
can be invented freely and combined with ‘scientific’ conventions introduced in
Thursday’s lecture. You should then include a legend explaining the meaning of styles
and patterns you have invented as well as ‘established’ patterns you have used. The
notation itself is an abstraction and interpretation of conditions and experience on site.
All physical objects, walls, pavement etc. should be recorded on a separate layer.

The human body can be used as a measuring instrument, although you are free to use
whichever other instruments you may have at your disposal. Relative values, such as
stronger, lighter, louder, warmer, etc, and vectors ‘sound/light/wind direction’ etc, will
therefore initially be more helpful for your analysis than absolute units such as °C, dB,
lux, candela, m/s Beaufort, RH%, etc.

notation
A system of figures or symbols used in a specialized
field to represent numbers, quantities, tones, or values:
musical notation
A brief note; an annotation: marginal notations.
environment
The totality of circumstances surrounding an organism
or group of organisms, especially the combination of
external physical conditions that affect and influence
the growth, development, and survival of organisms
The complex of social and cultural conditions affecting
the nature of an individual or community.
(The American Heritage ® Dictionary of the English
Language)
References
Traces of dance: drawings and notations of choreographers,
Text by Paul Virilio.
Sounds and signs: aspects of musical notation, Cole Hug
Eye music: the graphic art of new musical notation
Visual explanations: images and quantities evidence and
narrative, Edward Tufte
Envisioning information, Edward Tufte
gives them a creative power to investigate design in terms that would withstand
things and they are not bound by a system scrutiny by all the different partners in
which doesn’t expose some of these sensual a professional situation – technical experts,
aspects. When I’ve done it before, students clients and so on. So there was a sense
critique it as ‘well, nobody understands it’ of discomfort with the idea that ‘ok this
and then one talks to them about how they new guy wants us to do beautiful drawings
learned how to understand a plan. I wonder and that’s all there is to it’ and I said let’s
if you got that critique from students? approach ideas and positions we want to
get at through those drawings. Actually you
CL: There was a certain perception that might find those ‘technological experts’ to be
students were not confident about quite interested in new modes of notation,
articulating themselves in a professional it’s something they are working with and
situation, not being able to explain their often have to ‘invent’ for themselves.
shop Aimee Acton shopping mall Jayne Rodgers
shop Sarah Hardwidge pavillion Kara Wood
 This drawing by Joseph Deane (above)
maps the beach at Whitstable. He has
beach Heather Macey taken the musical notations, and literally
beach Zoe Cox applied techniques and conventions to
beach Jospeh Deane (right)
environmental phenomena.
AA: I wonder what your view of it is
retrospectively because there is no overt
design task in it other than the decisions of
recording. The brick wall the students come
up against tends to be about creative decisions.
CL: I find it difficult to answer that
question. Let’s look at Chinedum
Izundu’s work (right). He’s a student
in his first semester with Juliet Davis
and he looked at London Bridge
Station. The students were asked
to propose an intervention and
record changes. We are looking at a
concourse leading to Joiner Street; in
the lower part of the drawing we see
the base of the escalator leading up to
the main hall and the area where the
food stalls are. The brief which Juliet
Davis and I wrote together asks for
an intervention, some tampering
with devices affecting environmental
conditions, and recordings of the
before and after situations.
Allan, when you were reviewing
the work with Juliet, what was
your reaction?

AA: The task is incredibly challenging

for first year students because they’re
asked to think in highly complex and
oblique ways and they are designing
things which can’t be seen or touched.
The notation gave them a way of
seeing the unseen and became a
device for them to read and misread
the site. I think that the students
who took that seriously and got some
results from that stage of the project
were able to work with that without
any other representation of the
station. The notation became their
site so that by manipulating that concourse, London Bridge Station Chinendum Izundu (left)
notation they found a proposal or concourse, London Bridge Station Andreas Sivitos
station hall, London Bridge Station Cesare Servanti
intervention or transformation.

escalator, London Bridge Station Leah Scott
station hall, London Bridge Station Gemma Temlett
station, London Bridge Station Ingjiborg Jassefsdottir (right)
OL: I think that that is right – I would
argue perhaps with the word ‘misreading’,
but otherwise I would agree. Some of the
other work and similar work on notation
I’ve done is problematic in a certain way if
one does not understand the observations.
It is, as you say Allan, a changed site already
reinterpreted; they understand it to be
different and it is different. It is not a
misreading as much as a creative act and
I think students are creating the site as
they go and therefore their interventions
are richer, fuller and allude to more of
the complexity of the site.
Objective structural analogies

1. generation, analysis and modification of physical, vector-based three-dimensional

structures triggered by and translated from a two-dimensional aerial image

2. identification of, research into and documentation of structural concepts and

interpretations of structure at different scales

Schedule

– lecture ‘structural analogies’ part 1

> Browse google earth and select a satellite image as initializer of your structural concept
> Edit trace over your selected image, emphasizing aspects and editing out others,
test alternatives
> Identify a pattern and/or diagram in your tracings

– lecture ‘structural analogies’ part 2

> 3-Dimensionalize your structure using a sketch model, wire or linear wood profiles

– feedback, tutorials, ongoing experimentation

> Relate your structure to a structural concept explained in the lecture, e.g. system of
direct roads, minimum road system, network of minimum detours, generative system
(Frei Otto), centripetal or centrifugal grid (Rosalind Krauss), grid, ladder or intermediate
stage (Albert Pope) rhizomatic assemblage (Gilles Deleuze), ‘journey’ (Peter Greenaway),
semi-lattice (Christopher Alexander)

structure References
The arrangement of and relations between the parts Christopher Alexander : A City is not a Tree, from
or elements of something complex : flint is extremely Thackara, J. (ed.) (1988), Design After Modernism:
hard, like diamond, which has a similar structure. Beyond the Object, Thames and Hudson, London,
pp. 67-84
analogy
D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson : On Growth and Form,
The cognitive process of transferring information from
volume 1 and 2
a particular subject to another particular subject. In a
Georg Gerster : Grand Design, the Earth from Above
narrower sense, analogy is an inference or an argument
Yann Arthus Betrant : The Earth from the Air
from a particular to another particular, as opposed to
deduction, induction and abduction, where at least one
of the premises or the conclusion is general. Analogy
plays a significant role in problem solving, decision
making, perception, memory, creativity, emotion,
explanation and communication. It lies behind basic tasks
such as the identification of places, objects and people,
e.g. in face perception and facial recognition systems.
(Wikipedia)
Rainham Kara Wood Tokyo Emma Burgess
Bangkok Kalpana Parmar New York Joseph Deane
CL: What happens with that type of work
is that it starts to answer some questions
but also throws up some quite pertinent
conversations: the question of authorship,
the idea of phenomena, the idea of a
world existing in the imagination, of being
in a world. Jayne Rodgers (opposite)
worked with a brief asking her to browse
Google Earth and identify some kind
of structure which could be roadways
or rivers, or some other physical
phenomena perceived from space and
record and reread that. Jane instead used
a photograph she took from an airplane
flying over some location near Dubai. For
some unknown reason the system of
roads we are looking at here deals with
intersections in a peculiar way. There
only are T-type crossings. Her recording
then suggests a series of interconnected
rectangles. The way she made the model
relates to the idea of material thinking
or thinking with the material, thinking
through a material. She starts to use the
idea of the hinges as degrees of freedom,
degrees of movement which generate
a series of orthogonal and also more
oblique projections of that structure.
I wonder – as I am struggling to verbalize
those re-readings and transformations –
if you could help,

AA: I am a fan of this project and I think

what differentiates it is that it forces a
search for certain rules or characteristics
and patterns and I think it also gets over
the ‘contemporary disease’ of superficial
looking which encourages us to look at
Dubai Jayne Roger
things from other disciplines and then
New Zealand coast Daisy Maung Paris Vladimira Green
Cologne Karolina Kuhlmann Bagdad Akram Fahmi
 Centripetal and Centrifugal Grid
Albert Pope
The grid may be defined by the polarities of icon and apparatus,
order and complexity, strong and weak, to the point of suggesting that
it sustains two divergent organizational characteristics. There is another,
perhaps more productive, pair of terms capable of defining its opposing
qualities. Rosalind Krauss’ reading of the grid’s role in modern painting as
both ‘centripetal’ and ‘centrifugal’ is unique in defining its characteristics
with respect to larger spatial fields. She sets up the pair in the following way:
‘ … the grid is fully, even cheerfully, schizophrenic … Logically speaking, the
grid extends, in all directions, to infinity. Any boundaries imposed upon it
by a given painting or sculpture can only be seen – according to this logic
– as arbitrary. By virtue by the grid, the given work of art is presented as
a mere fragment, a tiny piece arbitrarily cropped from an infinitely larger
fabric. Thus the grid operates from the work of art outward, compelling
our acknowledgement of a world beyond the frame. This is the centrifugal
reading. The centripetal one works, naturally enough, from the outer limits
of the aesthetic object inward. The grid is, in relation to this reading a
re-presentation of everything that separates the work of art from the world,
from ambient space and from other objects. The grid is an introjection of the
boundaries of the world into the interior of the work …’ (Krauss, 1979, p.60)
The centrifugal reading of the grid posits its infinite extension or
continuity outward in all directions – the unlimited expansion of an inherently
open system. The centrifugal grid form represents not so much a form in
and of itself as it does the greater continuities to which it extends. Any
centrifugal grid is, by definition, a fragment or synecdoche of an unbounded
and unlimited field that can never be know in its entirety. It is the concrete
configuration that gives access to a greater, unknowable whole. Far from the
banal order with which it is often associated, the centrifugal grid, in Krauss’
suggestive language, is the ‘staircase to the Universal.’ (p.52).
The centripetal grid manifests the opposing characteristics. It is by
contrast a bounded figure. Its extent is known and limited. As opposed to
the expansive or explosive character of the centrifugal grid, the force of the
centripetal grid is contained and implosive. It is a closed, contracted system
that introjects ‘the boundaries of the world into the interior of the work….’
The representation of the centripetal grid is not synechdotal. Unlike the
centrifugal grid, it does not represent space beyond itself. It is a discrete
and thus emblematic form. In this way the centripetal grid resembles the
icon of pre-emptive or ‘strong’ order mentioned above.
What is most important in this centrifugal/centripetal distinction is that
it takes into account the effects of each type of grid organization on the
surrounding spatial field. As a discrete and closed figure, the centripetal grid is
cut off from its context. This discontinuity between the grid and the spatial field
creates a condition that does not exist in open, centrifugal organization. As an
isolated fragment, the centripetal grid posits an outside to its own inside. The
greater spatial field becomes not a site of immanent expansion, but an outside
that is alien to its own interior. In an open, centrifugal organization the grid is
merely the coordinates of everywhere and there is no such thing as an outside.
Its vertices are single episodes amongst the uncountable indices of a universal
space. This is not the same with closed, centripetal organization which, more
important than its internal organization, produces a spatial context that is
uniquely designed as residual. In centripetal grid organization, figure and field
are polarised, and an ‘outside’ is constructed.
This radical transformation of the surrounding spatial field, from being
the coordinates of a universal continuum to becoming a residuum – the outside
of a closed centripetal figure – constitutes a dramatic process of spatial
inversion. Krauss uses the gridded space of Mondrian’s paintings as an
example, indicating that the slight gaps that often occur between the end
of a grid line and the edge of the canvas throw the whole spatial field into
a violent reversal. This dramatic reversal of the spatial field is analogous
to a specific type of urban transformation that shall be identified below
as grid implosion.
The Historical Flow
It is necessary to reiterate that spatial distinctions can be linked to
the status of the grid. The importance of Krauss’ argument lies in the claim
that the grid is a significant index of space. The possibility of extending this
argument – to propose that the urban grid is a significant index of urban
space – is compelling, and has already been undertaken in historical studies
(Marcuse, 1987). The idea that continuous, centrifugal space is structured
by a continuous grid and discontinuous, centripetal space is structured by
a discontinuous grid is relatively straightforward. What makes the distinction
important in contemporary analysis is that the two opposing spatial conditions
simultaneously structure the present form of urban development. This dual
structure breaks roughly around the time of the Second World War. The
prewar city can be identified by its predominately open centrifugal pattern of
organization, and the postwar city can be identified by its predominantly closed
centripetal pattern of organization. The following analysis of these opposing
spatial conditions will focus, not only on these opposing gird forms, but on
the remarkable mid-century grid transformation. The contemporary city is
revealed in this transformation, when the open centrifugal space of the prewar
city evolves into the closed centripetal form of postwar urban organization.
If the contemporary city is revealed at the moment of closure, the
condition from which it emerges must be understood as relatively open
and expansive. This challenges standard assumptions of 20th-century urban
development where the order is exactly reversed. In the west, the prewar
city typically imagined as a closed and bounded fabric, out of which the
contemporary postwar city emerged as a open matrix of space. This idea
– the emergence of an inherently ‘open city’ from a closed and obstructive
urban fabric – supports the majority of historical surveys of modern urban
form. In order to get beyond these ideas and to discover what they conceal
with regard to the present urban formation, it is useful to propose an
inversion of the sequence. An understanding of the prewar city as spatially
open and centrifugal suggests that the 20th-century city evolved into
a closed and exclusive urban form. In order to argue this, some significant
ideological prejudices must be challenged. In effect, a defense of the
19th-century gridded city must be taken on as a defense of the open city.
Excerpt from ‘Ladders,’ by Albert Pope, Princeton Architectural Press, 1997, with permission
by the author.
there is that kind of superficiality of looking OL: I am not so sure that is arbitrary or
at a screen that keeps changing or the clichés what that necessarily means. I think this
about the MTV generation. I think what this project is fantastic because the student
encourages is quite a deep looking at what develops a narrative of making, really, and
was quite a straightforward thing. Looking then hopefully is able to look at that, critique
at a portion of territory and establish certain it perhaps. Another thing is to help the
rules and once you have those rules it gives student understand through their notation
you greater control over your explorations. the way in which they are thinking.
There is an understanding about how
things connect and you then explore those AA: A complete aside: another way that’s
possibilities. It never becomes arbitrary I’d come at it is through the idea of research
because you always have the context of those and perhaps a scientific model. In that model
patterns and rules you have established. there is an appreciation of an individual
 The fractal dimension and its use in architectural analysis
Dissertation synopsis by Elizabeth Lambert

The dissertation allowed me to delve into a topic which has long
intrigued me: ‘Fractals’. This far ranging topic, encompassing such a wide
scope for research, proved difficult at first to find an avenue with a specific
relevance to contemporary architecture that was personal to me, drawing
on my strengths, and with an original angle.
It is through fractals that in the last 50 years a greater knowledge
of the natural world and its apparent chaos has been established. This new
science named ‘the geometry of nature’ (Mandelbrot, 1982), concerned with
two intertwining threads of thought – disorder in nature and self-similarity –
enables us to describe the formations of leaves, the shape of a cloud, and
to describe the complexities of a coastline.
In order to evaluate the theory I studied three sites located along
the north Kent coast which I went on to photograph, and then generate
panoramic skyline images at the three sites. My earlier study enabled me to
choose an appropriate means in which to calculate the fractal dimension of
each site and use the dimension as a tool for image analysis.
.
.

The challenge however proved fruitful and in conducting this

research I have explored the fractal dimension in the two forms namely the
Self Similarity dimension and the Measured dimension. This allowed me to
compare such things as coastlines to skylines directly. Both are fractals in the
sense that you zoom in closer and closer and decrease the scale at which
you measure, the total length of both will continue to increase. They have
a relationship between scale and measurement length, a fractal dimension.
Which posed the question: ‘Can this create a new way in which designers
can link site and building on a level as sophisticated as nature links the
Leaf to the forest?’
The dimension once measured, can additionally be used to compare
numerically the character of existing natural sites and potentially to
generate new man-made constructions with the same underlying degree
of complexity.
 contribution to a collective pursuit. I think
Is it more important to be correct or relevant?
that architecture often works entirely
A meditation on forgetting
against that idea. It is more interested in
Allan Atlee a series of autonomous and competitive
auteurs. That is quite challenging for a
school of architecture dealing with
‘For this invention of yours will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those benchmarking and the idea of competency
A person without memory is lost in a world
who learn it, by causing them to neglect their memory, inasmuch as, from and so on and how you can encourage
of codes and signs. Our race, our gender,
students to take part in a scientific process
their confidence in writing, they will recollect by the external aid of foreign
our social class, our nationality; all are groups and see their part within it. Physicists for
symbols, and not by the internal use of their own faculties. Your discovery,
we feel we belong to or identify with through instance have a clear understanding that
therefore, is a medicine not for memory, but for recollection, – for recalling
collective memories. Nations can only be because the whole pedagogy of physics
to, not for keeping in mind.’
nations because of what their citizens have in is set up as a series of small steps while
‘You are providing for your disciples a show of wisdom without the reality. architecture is discussed in terms of
common. What they remember – the words to
For, acquiring by your means much information unaided by instruction, they
the national anthem, oral histories, custom and cannons or movements or great auteurs.
will appear to possess much knowledge, while, in fact, they will, for the
ceremony. Memories and their authentication
most part, know nothing at all; and, moreover, be disagreeable people to CL: There have been situations where
give individuals a sense of who they are.
deal with, as having become wise in their own conceit, instead of truly wise.’ I’ve felt that students looking at their work
They place value on the self amidst the morass
through those canons and auteurs have
of others. The common obsession with ended up with what Frank Gehry has
Plato (c. 427–347 BC), recounting the response of the Egyptian God
family trees and genealogies is an attempt described as mimetic exercises. You’ve
Thamus to Theuth’s invention of letters
to document and authenticate particular pointed to the model of science as an
memories, placing the interesting and valuable alternative approach, but you could also
A recent survey published in one of the glossy news magazines – look at art, and at the way artists have
ones in a loftier position than their mundane
I forget which one exactly – revealed that something like 60% of British adults
counterparts. On this subject American theorist worked with Paul Valery’s bonmot ‘Seeing
could not recall the events which led directly to the United State’s war on Iraq is forgetting the name of the thing you
Lewis Hyde illustrates the absurdities of his
in 1990. Furthermore some 40% couldn’t say for sure which side had won. are looking at’, which then is not about
own family’s genealogical amnesia. His family
Without wanting to lend credence to Jean Baudrillard’s daft assertion that ‘The looking at a project and saying this is
proudly trace their ancestry to William Hyde,
‘modernist’ or ‘organic’ architecture and
Gulf War Did Not Happen’ these opinion poll results should make everyone
an early pioneer. Lewis Hyde calculates that feeling we already know what it is about,
concerned during the current rush to war with the same country. Unarmed
in the twelve generations there are some 2048 but rather about forgetting the label and
with a direct recollection of the conflict a decade ago, a clear majority of the
other individuals who go without mention – no really looking at the thing, situation, or
British population will rely instead on the half truths circulated by the popular
doubt rustlers, rapists and murderers amongst condition. ‘Seeing’ is what much of the
press (glaspaper included) and the authoritative lies peddled by our elected student work we are now looking at is
them. This example is in its own way an
governments and their officers of the state; the CIA, MI6, Mossad, etc. about and the graphic notation is a tool
attempt to ‘destroy the fantasy of origins’ (the
Odd perhaps that such collective amnesia should go unnoticed for that. You’ve written an article in
lifeblood of all nations) – something Michael
and unchecked. Odd because our society places such value on the power ‘Glaspaper’, Allan, on ‘forgetting’ and I’m
Foucault mapped out in his ‘Archaeology of
of recollection. Memories define who we are. We are what we remember. wondering if you think that article relates
Knowledge’ (or was it another text?).
to the student work here?
AA: I think that forgetting is a generally
a useful tactic and one that can liberate
thought and action, so for sure it I think
it relevant to the learning process and
it is particularly well illustrated in these
exercises. It seems to me that what you
have been doing with the student is
Education and Memory Strategies of Forgetting
providing a framework for forgetting in
some ways. Rather than anticipating the
destination, and conceptualizing that as
Our education system rewards If the art of memory is at times burden shouldn’t we be exploring
some sort of orthodoxy or authoritative, recall. Anyone who has undertaken high strategies of forgetting? Seen not as a disability, rather as a positive and
or maybe it’s better described as an school exams will have their own memories even deliberate act, could forgetting allow us to occupy spaces hitherto
appropriate outcome; the students are of mundane repetitions. Participation in deemed out of bounds? Forgetting suggests a pause. It often goes hand
tricked a little bit into forgetting about regulated exams that rely on memory in hand with ‘losing track of time’. Decelerating the velocity of a particular
such assumptions and anxieties. I really prevents many young people from reading moment. If the colonisation of time and acceleration of natural rhythms was
feel that this has huge possibilities for
widely and intuitively. Pushing children one of the prerequisites to the capitalist system of accumulation then might
it liberates each student from their own
through study programmes in English the voluntary daydreams of forgetfulness be one small tactic of resistance?
prejudices about their practice.
Literature may well make them able to If our identity is defined by what we remember, then we can only

CL: You’re essay points to those

prejudices, the tyrannies of memory, or
perhaps less polemically, perceptions of
self and one’s working process, as defining
one’s identity. Gaining some distance, and
finding the right distance from individual
and society’s ‘memory’ seems to be
crucial both for the model of science
and models of architectural practice.
OL: There is something about the
incremental which is not necessarily in
the way the profession perhaps thinks.
This get back to the dialogue one has
with the medium that one is using, but
I think that it’s a very interesting track to
pursue with a school to understand the
importance of the incremental rather
than necessarily always the overview,
or the big distance or the far distance.
read better but may simultaneously prevent
them from becoming better read.
In order to pass their professional
exams and enter the exclusive club of their
peers, architecture students must study,
remember and recall regulations and
contractual clauses to demonstrate future
competence. The majority of building
regulations and contract jargon is drafted
in response to accident, mishap and
negligence. It is worth considering that
permission to practice architecture (as is
the case in many professions) is granted
through the acknowledgement of, and
compliance with complex legal codes that
have been shaped by the worst conduct
and incompetence of past generations.
possibly hope to change our identity by forgetting. During the Great Migration
to America in the Nineteenth Century Europeans were handed leaflets at Ellis
Island urging them to ‘FORGET YOUR PAST, YOUR TRADITIONSIN ORDER
THAT YOU CAN BECOME AMERICANS’. The dangers are clear. Taken
literally such advice results in our current predicament where many citizens of
the world’s most powerful nation neither know where Iraq is nor what its people
have suffered but are at the same time sure that it must be destroyed. However
the sentiments are interesting. Could it be possible to redefine yourself as
American – freer, no longer dragging around the European corpse of memory?
All attempts by nations to move on from troubled pasts have relied upon
processes of forgetting and commemoration. Unlike in South Africa, Germany
or Chile, the apparent unwillingness to escape the tyrannies of memory is
dragging Northern Ireland back into the worst excesses of its past troubles.
The prospect of forgetting everything is as unattractive as that of
remembering everything. Both become Groundhog Days filled in the first
instance with the constant repetition of experience, the latter by the constant
recollection of past actions. (Consider that to truly remember every action
in its minutiae would occupy the same amount of time as the act itself. It is
believed that dreaming during unconsciousness is the mechanism by which
we filter our brain of unnecessary memory and detail). If we accept then that
forgetting can be an essential and attractive cognitive act we must address
if and how it can be deployed to our advantage.
There are numerous examples of creative individuals who have
attempted to deploy tactics of forgetting to create particular types of work.
Musician John Cage believed it was important to ‘forget the past in order to
be more in the present’. Such practice throws up the possibility of existing in a
state in which everything is a discovery, every sound constantly new. This form
of creative meditation is about being attentive to the moment, not the past.
Learning and Forgetting
How do our schools and universities come to terms with the idea of
appropriate forgetting? Must teachers reassess their role in the context of
such a process? Can and should forgetfulness be encouraged and rewarded?
Rethinking the learning process to include tactical forgetting forces us to
simultaneously question what part memory will play in our development.
What if we reconsider the role of the teacher as someone who doesn’t teach
you things but helps you remember things you already knew? Accepting that
all human beings are born loving and with an intuitive sense of reliance
upon and interdependence with the pack, then surely it is to these valuable
roots that remembrance should lead us. Why is it that we forget the art of
play, discovery and experimentation during the course of our education yet
are conditioned to remember our place within the hierarchies of society?
Could these strategies of appropriate forgetting be applied to the
general education of architects? Like doctors, lawyers and engineers, architects
are taught to rely heavily on precedent, creative, technological and legal.
But need this be the case? For a doctor it is important to remember why the
administering of 1000 milligrams of morphine might not be a good idea.
Lawyers justify their existence by remembering the actions of other lawyers
memories of past actions. The stresses on a beam have a significant bearing –
if you will pardon the pun. Architects on the other hand can only differentiate
themselves from builders by generating ideas about buildings.
Architectural education in the United Kingdom is becoming highly
regulated, prescriptive and increasingly homogeneous. Universities are
compelled to place ever-greater emphasis on ‘essential components’ within
their degree programmes. This places great restraints upon the student and the
teacher, pushing the spirit of invention and the respect for ideas further and
further down the pecking order of priorities. Competence can be demonstrated
by the recollection of convention. The fostering of invention requires the
rediscovery of play and justice. This requires considerable forgetfulness.
Cedric Price believes that the Royal Institute of British Architects
(read all professional bodies) has ‘forgotten its real reason for being,
namely to improve the delight and usefulness that society draws from the
products of its members.’ (A circus? A Magic Circle? A Dream Factory?)
He consequently argues that the RIBA should stop attempting to determine
the nature and quality of schools of architecture, instead linking with those
schools that match its intellectual aspirations at any one point in time. If, as
Price has also stated, architecture is too slow to solve problems and should
concern itself with creating ‘new appetites’ then the student of architecture
shouldn’t concern him or herself with the ponderous conventions of the
profession, which will most likely be redundant by the time it matters. Forget
about it. Our institutions of learning – the universities, schools, talking shops
and pubs should become places that generate free space through forgetting.
Only remember what really matters. Whatever that might be.
This essay originally appeared in the journal GLASPAPER 04
 A conversation
Christoph Lueder: You had joined us for the final review of students’
‘Porosity’ projects, and might remember some of those. ‘Environmental
Notation’ is asking students to look at spatial parameters you could describe
as intensive rather than extensive; rather than recording boundaries, it would
be about temperature, density, humidity, or patterns of human occupation,
about quantities that you could measure and other qualities you perceive
with your senses. All of these projects are about looking at things, about
ways of seeing, and then manipulating what you have seen. That might be
somewhat related to biomimetics.
George Jermidias: You need to develop your own thoughts and your
own techniques of seeing things, and it is quite interesting. If you look
at biometrics and at the work that has been done in Germany, it is very
interesting historically because people like Frei Otto and Werner Nachtigall
are initiating a lot of things. They looked at shape more than anything and
at the functionality of shape. That is fine except that the thing that is difficult
and interesting about biology is that shape is only part of a very highly
integrated system and a lot of the functionally of the shape really comes
from other things and it took a long time I think to go beyond the visual.
To see how the actual thing does work, how it is put together and what
are the things that we should make it tick in particular directions.
CL: There’s a notion in architecture of form being about personal
expression. Just as you are explaining that biological form is part of a system,
architectural form may be part of many systems. Two of these many systems
could be described as a social and a biological system. The ways humans
interact may be different from organisms. Has that come up when you were
working with architects?
GJ: It certainly has come up. If one looks at biology as an aspect
which can inspire architecture, very often people say, well what is the social
content of a tree. It is a nice structure, a very functional structure, it does a
lot of things in very interesting ways and there are ways from which we can
learn. Water transport, or assembling the structural materials to stand up;
all these things have got very interesting mechanical, chemical processes
of assembly, of organisation, of restructuring you don’t have any inhabitants.
Communication in biology needs to be looked at in two ways.
There is a lot of communication within a multi cellular organism,
because cells need to know where they are and what they are doing and
how they have to respond. When plants or animals react, that reaction is
a collective integration of information at the cellular level.
The other aspect of biology is about social groups of animals, ants,
bees, termites at the low end and then larger animals, flocks of birds, big
groups of ruminants, and they are real and people are beginning finally to
better understand the social organisation of a large group of animals.
Biometrics can look at both things. There is a lot that has been done
on bees and ants, for example, which is fascinating, but again essentially
it is communication, and communication means sensing, and sensing means
having special structures, special sensors which allow you to do that. It is
important to relate communication with the technology behind it, and you
mentioned things which are not measurable as dimensions. You need to
have something which will be able to sense the changes in these patterns,
whether it is an air flow, whether it is a humidity level, whether it is light,
illumination, and then one can go one step further and put in the actuation,
something which responds.
CL: In that context, I find the idea of authorship quite interesting.
Generally, the architect might not be seen as an author of a particular
environmental condition; and you would not often describe an iconic
building by its thermal conditions, although some of those might create
very specific atmospheric conditions. You’ve brought up Frei Otto; his
notion of self organising material changes the notion of authorship.
 GJ: Biometrics covers so many different aspects; you will find things
from architecture on the one hand to chemistry at the other end. There are
some general trends which come out even though the range of topics may
be very vast and one is certainly the fact that biology is generally built from
the bottom up as opposed to top down.
Now, the first impact of a building, and the first thought, is a shape,
and then you start filling in the shape with elements which you may call
functions: temperature control, humidity control, ventilation, but this is done
always in a piecemeal fashion, it is never as yet done in a more integrated
fashion. Whereas in biology one of the biggest lessons is really this continuous
integration from the lowest to the highest levels so that throughout this
process there is a very strong element of communication, which perhaps
is missing from industry nowadays.
Flowers can react to light, flowers which close and open are an
example that goes beyond the visual. There is an additional functionality
which says look if the sun is not shining directly on me then I will just close
up because there will be no insect pollination, so I might as well save energy,
save water, whatever.
Generally, most people will react positively to something they see
in biology. I think it is really very important to step back and think how the
thing got where it is and for what reason because otherwise we disconnect
from that integration process. Yes a flower is a beautiful object but it is a
beautiful object because it has got a particular function to perform.
Biology has a lot of high aesthetical values but it is not always easy
to go through the steps which have lead in that direction, within a timescale
of one organism now or even the timescale of evolution.
CL: That idea of retracing steps, of looking at processes, is connected
to translation, to placing things in a new context, to transposing things.
For that, the model is an important tool and in architecture it is often
a physical scale model. Then we discover that certain parameters don’t scale
very well. Colour doesn’t really scale very well, small patches of red are
perceived differently than a large red wall and also structure doesn’t scale well.
GJ: There are a lot of interesting things that people have seen in a
biological context in one particular scale and one has got to be very careful.
Some things will scale but some others won’t and it is not very easy to see.
This is where modelling got an enormous role to play because first of all we
can deal with a lot more information nowadays than in the past, secondly
because we can add more easily now a physical dimension to our models
if you like, we can put forces, temperatures, airflows, a whole host of very
sophisticated modelling techniques.
A good example of that are plants. Plants when they are young function
as a pneumatic structure, whatever keeps the stem up is actually hydraulic
pressure generated by the cells so plants will carry on using only that method
because since they are going to die and start again there is no point in
investing a lot of energy unnecessarily. The amount of solid matter is very
small but you can create highly stressed structures and that gives you the
structural performance.
If you are going to be a perennial plant like a tree you start rigidifying
and gluing these bits of fibre together because now you have got a long term
investment and if you look at the structure it is very efficient but it is limited
because you cannot scale it.
If you go to a different approach and take a piece of wood which
is very highly structured, then that performance level can be scaled, we can
make composites which replicate some of the features and we can scale those
up quite easily.
Physics is physics and if you put the physics behind that you can see
what you can scale and what you cannot scale.
Context porosity

The urgency of a sustainable approach to the construction and operation of buildings is

sparking a renewed interest in the building skin as membrane, acting as active and /or
passive environmental control system, reducing the need for and in some cases even
replacing building services installations.

This sets the stage for new explorations into materiality, environmental and tactile qualities of
building skins and membranes. Porosity can be thought of and experienced at various scales.
Almost any material will have porous properties a one or even multiple scales. Gaps in walls,
apertures, windows and doors act as pores and selectively filter, concentrate or transform
environmental phenomena such as light, humidity, sound and their subjective perception.

References range in scale and time from the urban scale (e.g. Noelli Plan of Rome) to the
microscopic scale (e.g. Osmosis).

Schedule

> Research, collect and document materials (e.g. living organisms, remains of organisms,
rocks, aluminium foam, etc.) in regard to porosity and process (e,g, osmosis, filtering,
concentration, absorption of fluids, gases, heat, electromagnetic waves (visible light,
radio waves, microwaves, x-rays), compression waves (sound)) at various scales
> Present your research
> Cut and draw a section through your chosen material
> Identify a pattern and/or diagram in your section
> Specify tasks your membrane will perform, e.g. diffusing light, absorbing sound,
alarming, ventilating the skin and controlling moisture, ventilating space, isolating AA: Looking at this through the lens of OL: It is about application but what we
PowerPoint and time I think that this saw with the third year’s design work was
or transmitting thermal energy, reflecting electromagnetic waves. There is no program.
exercise is more successful in a larger that some of the students were able to use
However, you can think of your membrane in a specific situation defined by yourself.
group, possibly because you get a bigger the things they were doing as carriers,
> Model and sample your material at an enlarged or reduced scale.
range of approaches which allows you to as metaphors that could help them think
spot and develop patterns. I think it was through their design project. The work
more problematic with a smaller group enabled students not only to use it quite
porous References
Able to absorb fluids; ‘the partly porous walls of our Biology and building – biologie und bau pneus the 3rd in forth year. It does also ask fundamental explicitly in part of the building in terms
digestive system’; ‘compacting the soil to make it less colloquium – Otto Frei
question of how we tackle assessment. of material or construction but also in
porous’ Encyclopedia of Science in Action
Full of pores or vessels or holes Skins for buildings (Architect’s Materials Samples Book) Let’s move on to the porosity projects. terms of looking through the building
Allowing passage in and out; ‘our unfenced and largely Buildings as living organisms (video)
These are perhaps more overtly about itself in terms of the larger idea.
unpoliced border inevitably has been very porous’ The way of the cell – molecules, organisms and the
(WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University) order of life application.
 CL: That is starting to address issues
about modes of operation. We’ve been
speaking about us as teachers putting
on different hats for different disciplines
on different days of the week and
we’ve declared modes of operation
for students in a playful way. We’ve said,
let’s all be research scientists for a week,
drawing on methodologies Allan has
been establishing in students’ dissertations,
and then let’s all be lab scientists.
Daniel Arpino-Walsh (opposite) looks at
pumice and volcanic eruptions and finds
out some surprising facts, for instance
some of the stones that contain the most
air have a very low permeability and then
actually start to float in water. He started
to look at trapped gas formations and
arrived at a distinction of open cell and
closed-cell minerals and foams. Then
Janice Shales set up a laboratory situation
and students experimented with the
interaction of materials, worked with
air balloons, water-filled air balloons,
ping-pong balls, Styrofoam, etc.

AA: What I found interesting about being

‘research scientists for a week’ is that
practice is really like that. You have to
have lots of irons in the fire and lots of
chapters in your cultural engagement and
pumice Daniel Arpino-Walsh gall bladder Donald Kwaku
your interests have to be broadened so
that you can call on them when you need
them. It is only through stepping outside
of architecture that it’s possible to see
back into architecture with clearer eyes.
I think you benefit most by being taken
off the path and then looking back at the
path and that can be done through reading
as well as making.

OL: What does it mean to be on the path

anymore? I think a lot of this work first
approaches problems from oblique points
of view, and then that gets imbedded
in the curricula of the courses (which
I think we are moving towards) and that
becomes a path in a way or at least a
major aspect of the school.

CL: In that context it is interesting that

the diploma work of Steven Croucher,
who approached issues of construction
and space through looking at porous
membranes and porous skins, then
became a launch pad for other student’s
projects. Gary Kellett (this page) is
looking at the human kidney as a filter,
at systems of multidirectional fluid
movement in a plane juxtaposed with a
linear vascular movement perpendicular
to that plane. His proposal combined
retention of rainwater, with
complimentary circuits for heating
and cooling the building.

OL: That has a lot to do with this place

being a place of pedagogical research,
a place where we can learn from the
students. Having said that, we have come
kidney Gary Kellett
to a straight-jacketed place in terms of

osteroporosis Ross Carpenter
skin folicles Joseph Deane (right)
the way the units were written up and
delivered and from the very outset
we planned to subvert when necessary
in order to deliver what you want to
deliver. Again that comes from how
much you allow these possibilities.
CL: In some way there is a simultaneous
conversation where the school is some kind
of object students are building themselves.
This work by Joe Deane (above) looks at
diagrams of the human skin and specifically
at follicles and their mode of operation, the
way they control temperature. It became
a vehicle for working with an enormous
amount of complexity and dealing with
systemic thinking, a way of looking at
things in relation to each other.
Elizabeth Lambert (this page) looks at
notions of density, layers of dead skin, live
skin. She’s combining a scientific mode
with a quite associative mode working with
a reading of Rachel Whiteread’s house
sculpture. Her understanding of that piece
of sculpture is an important outcome of
that process and might have been
more important that the proposition
of a building.
OL: I think it might be in the first year
we have to encourage students to work
through things in order to understand
things. Whereas other people might write
about something or through something,
it seems that a lot of the work we do
here is actually making things in order
to understand. So a product that might
skin layers Elisabeth Lambert
be beautiful can also be an analytical tool.
retina Ivan Chang homeostasis Heather Macey
 A Pilgrim’s Gateway to Canterbury
Stephen Croucher

A car park is proposed in Dan John Gardens as a machine to

receive contemporary pilgrims arriving in their automobiles. The access
ramp allows for a rare and precarious sense of speed after a frustratingly
stodgy approach to the city. At the top, people and cars divide to begin
separate descents.
People enter a tall, rhizomatic space, the Vertical Labyrinth.
Designed to decelerate, it is a space of opacity and depth, mystery and
shadow, sensory invitation and discovery. Time becomes stretched. Water
collects on the large surface of the car park and embarks upon a descent
of purification through the Vertical Labyrinth. Below are secretive spaces;
hewn from solid concrete mass, chambers beneath the promenade invite
pilgrims to tranquil contemplation by a pool. Lighting conditions within the
chambers continuously vary and are enriched by refraction and reflection
of light by water.
One of the early concrete castings unexpectedly re-directed the
project. When left outside in wet conditions, the specimen babbled and
weazed. Closer inspection revealed a rapid succession of bubbles escaping
from the crushed brick aggregate to the surface. A theme of developing
porous concrete became intrinsic to character and form of the building
proposal. Experiments commenced with permeable aggregate such as
brick, polystyrene balls, volcanic illeta balls and straw. Aluminum powder
additive was used to create air pockets in the mixture by oxidation and
then allowed water to pass through. The water machine became an ongoing
test bed for exploring permeability.
CL: This might be a point where we start to
talk about our position in that process and
our own learning curve as tutors and the
way we might learn from students, from the
process, from each other. One of the things
that have been crucial driving forces is the
Diploma studio; a situation which was only
loosely planned then became a springboard
for new trajectories. The interest in porosity
can be traced back to Stephen Croucher
who established his own process before we
started to formalise an academic framework
for the other studios. We really benefited
from being able to transform a student’s
process into something more formalised
for the school. In the diploma studio, from
the beginning we were playing on a highly
chaotic field and kicking the ball in all kinds
of directions. That was for me a very
positive experience.

AA: It gave some students (such as Steven)

a place for testing things in the workshop;
I think Steven became more and more
interested in clarifying things for himself
through the tools he had made for himself
in the studio. We are coming back into
that process and it was like watching a
highly experimental chef in the kitchen.
He had developed enough confidence
through experimentation to know the
materials, not in terms of concrete and
water, but know the material he had in
terms of his portfolio and his work and
he was able to put together a quirky little
dish, which became quite peculiar in
terms of architectural composition. It is
exemplified by images like that which is
a complete post-rationalisation on his part.
 Allan Atlee is a founding member of the design
co-operative GLAS, which undertook community based
design consultancy; art projects; agit-prop works;
exhibitions; educational workshops. He curated and
designed a number of architectural exhibitions, including
‘LANDFORMS: Contemporary Scottish Architecture’
shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2004. He
is currently Diploma Course Leader at CSA.
www.glaspaper.com
Oren Lieberman is Head of Canterbury School of
Architecture. He previously founded the architecture/art
practice INDEX in Germany, and has taught extensively,
including at the Bartlett, the Technische Universität
Berlin, and Strathclyde University. His research is centred
on the notion of radical spatial performativity and how,
through actual transformation of spatial conditions
habitual and customary practices can be questioned and
destabilised. He is a Visiting Professor in Architecture at
the University of Applied Sciences in Bochum, Germany.
Albert Pope is the Gus Sessions Wortham Professor of
Architecture at the Rice University School of Architecture.
He is the author of ‘Ladders’ (Princeton Architectural
Press, 1997) and numerous articles concerning the
broad implications of post-war urban development.
Professor Pope’s current research is involved with the
phenomenological impact of urban infrastructure.
Professor George Jeronimidis is the Director of the Centre
for Biomimetics at the University of Reading. He has
recently been invited to join the scientific advisory board
of the Max Planck Institute for Colloid and Interface
Research in Golm, Germany, and the editorial board of the
International Journal of Virtual and Physical Prototyping.

Christoph Lueder has taught at the University of Stuttgart

and the ETH Zurich. He is interested in the diagram
as a discursive and generative tool in architecture and
urbanism. Built projects include a library for the University
of Magdeburg (2003), as well as urban housing in
Ingolstadt, Germany (1998), and Anting New Town,
Shanghai, China (2005). He currently is Acting Course
Director BA Architecture at Kingston University London.
www.lueder.info

I think that all of the exercises rely on a OL: That has a lot to do with the general
high degree of surprise and actually you directions that we are trying to take the
have no idea of what the end result will school vis-à-vis research and what research
look like. An old cliché in education is this is and looking at how students are
old crafts model or piano model where you transforming themselves through a different
know what level 8 sounds like and you just way of working.
persevere until you get to level 8. And then
there is the laboratory style approach where
student are aware of a process that they are
going to embark on and they are given the
confidence to pursue that rigorously but to
not be judged on whether or not they reach
a preconceived destination point.
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