unit 4 - pop up city
DESCRIPTION
programme brief for Unit 4 in the AA Summer School 2012TRANSCRIPT
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1Cities are not machines, built once and for all, but remarkable organisms. Like a coral reef, the city is always becoming a product, but that is because, first of all, it is a process.
- Roy Porter, London: A Social History
To live in LONDON is a question of pace. Here today, gone tomorrow, the city is constantly
changing to the point where if you listen closely you might almost hear the thrum of its vibrant
rhythm. With Londons quick step, we city dwellers have the fortune of the unexpected surprise,
that serendipity of a new pop-up cafe, cinema or bar just around the corner. This year, we have
the OLYMPICS - a strange architectural creature whose silhouette has appeared on the eastern
horizon, seemingly out of nowhere, like one of the pop-up books many of us played with as
children.
The pop-up book is an appropriate device in describing the ever-changing nature of London, but
there is also something in many childrens toys that lends itself to spatially innovative discussions
about architecture. The pop-up book, nesting dolls, Jacobs ladder; there is a TRANSFORMATIVE
quality in these devices which not only speaks to the imaginary worlds we create as children, but
also to how we can form and inhabit space into a variety of constellations over time.
In our POP-UP CITY, we will use a handful of carefully selected childrens TOYS to explore
questions of scale, inversion, movement, aggregation, and insertion at the scale of the object
and then reinterpret them to create our own MINI-METROPOLIS within London. These objects will
be deconstructed and reconfigured to understand their inner workings and their potential to be
translated into architecture. Building proposals will first develop in isolation before being inserted
into the city and designed in the context of other projects within the unit to form a collective
proposal for the Olympic legacy site. In this exploration, we will tackle not only the sudden
insertion of a new mini-city NESTED within a city as in the Olympic Village, but also grapple with
what kind of legacy we leave behind once weve made our mark. Let the GAMES begin.
Pop Up by Liddy Scheffknecht and A
rmin B. W
agner
APRS CITYAA Summer School 2012
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2POP-UP CITYShaelena Morley & Manijeh Verghese
WEEK 1:UNMAKE/ REMAKE
Students will work in pairs to research, deconstruct and
reconstruct a toy to understand its spatial potential and
envision how it could be inhabited and manipulated
at the building scale. Students will make presentations
to the rest of the group to record their findings at the
end of the week using the original toy, small sketch
models, images and drawings.
There will be a trip to the Toy Museum and a seminar
with a former Toy-maker.
WEEK 2: LOCATE / SPECULATE
After understanding the potential of their toy, students will
now choose a site within the Olympic footprint to locate their
intervention. Programming their buildings accordingly, they
will look at how the object is inserted within the urban fabric
of London and what routes, landscaping and infrastructure
will be necessitated by locating their pop-up proposals here.
A trip to the Building Centre to locate our scale proposals
within their model of London and a visit to the Olympic site.
There will also be a discussion with photographer Giles Price
MID-REVIEW: INSERT/ CONSTRUCT
For the mid-review, students will present their initial
toy research and study models along with their
speculations on how they are appropriated and
transformed into a miniature city.
We will explore the city through models, drawings,
thoughtful image making and collage.
The mid-review will include initial research, study
models, site elevations and plans
WEEK 3: TOY CITY/ APRS CITY
In the final week, students will work in collaboration to bring
together their models, collages and drawings to construct a
combined site proposal. This hybrid drawing will connect
each speculative project to the context it sits within and to
one other. We will discuss the construction, lifespan and
deconstruction of these proposals and envision ways to
capture this through our unit meta-drawing.
We will have a drawing/ collage workshop with Dip 11
graduate Yuma Yamamoto.
The
Cas
e of
the
Elus
ive
Room
, Man
ijeh
Verg
hese
201
2M
acroscopic Olym
piad, Giles Price 2012
AA
Sum
mer
Sch
ool I
nter
im J
ury,
Man
ijeh
Verg
hese
201
1A
Cabinet of C
urious Living, Shaelena Morley 2012
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3APRS CITYAA Summer School 2012
Each of the toys we have chosen can be manipulated to change their
spatial configuration. In doing so, there is a sensory change in how
we interact/ experience them.
TOYS:
FLIP BOOK
Animating objects by moving paper was the most primitive form of the
animated movies we see today. Creating space through a series of flat
images, the book as an object is situated somewhere in between. As a
pop-up, it has the potential to be chameleon-like through how it can
change its appearance sequentially over time.
JACOBS LADDER
A deceivingly simple device, the Jacobs Ladder plays with stacking
and alternating front and back sidedness which allows multiple
spatial configurations through a seemingly planar system. By flipping
one element, the entire set of planes transforms through a domino
effect, one which could be carefully controlled to create a thickened
boundary that negotiates between spaces on site.
MAGIC CUBE
Through a series of simple manipulations this cubic object can tell
multiple stories through inversion and reconfiguration. With eight
smaller cubes brought together to make the larger cube, the faces of
each tell a small part of multiple stories which create the larger whole.
It has the potential to invert volumes creating interesting shifts between
public and private or interior and exterior spaces.
POP UP BOOK
The ability of making a 3-dimensional form magically appear from
planes of paper simply by turning the page is the joy of reading a
pop-up book. The detailed mechanisms of paper engineering that
make this possible have the potential to work at a much larger scale to
create space, reconfigure it or even cause it to disappear altogether!
RUSSIAN DOLLS
The nesting of a smaller object within a larger object raises questions
of how the same form needs to be abstracted as it decreases in scale
but also how the fundamental design of the object can work at every
scale. As a pop-up it could be installed at varying scales throughout
the site, harnessing its formal similarities yet potential programmatic
differences.
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4POP-UP CITYShaelena Morley & Manijeh Verghese
Shaelena Morley AADipl 2012; BSc 2008
After studying in Boston and London for the past 9 years, Shaelena is very excited about recently becoming a
graduate! Her most recent academic work was an investigation of cultural site generated through collection
and how it shapes context. It was during this investigation that she discovered her love of childrens toys and
the spatial potential they have. In addition to her studies she has contributed to student publications at the AA.
She has also taught architecture in Oxford as part of the Oxbridge Academic Summer Programmes. Shaelena
is interested in pop up architecture because of its ability to transform a neighbourhood with maximum impact
using minimal gestures and its potential portability in the city.
Manijeh Verghese AADipl(Hons) 2012; BA 2007
Manijeh recently graduated from the AA and has a degree in Architecture and Mathematics from Wellesley
College. She has worked for large and small practices in London and Boston, with two years experience at
Foster + Partners. She spent the last two years exploring the idea of context through books of various formats.
Her final project was a detective case file challenging the scalar notions of the room and the city. She is a
writer for various architectural publications including Icon and is the website editor of Disegno Magazine. She
also edits the AAs triannual newsletter, AArchitecture. Manijeh likes the idea of combining the permanence of
architecture with the transient nature of the pop-up book to unfold new urban scenarios that we can inhabit.
http://www.londonpopups.com/
Inverting Schwitters Merzbau through Merzcube, part of Shaelenas 5th year project
Unfolding the route through Studio 54, part of Manijehs 5th year project