Temporary / mobile / everlasting in London...2

The studio congregated at Pontoon Docks, and just 15 minutes east from the bustle of the City the difference in landscape was quite incredible; the view from the DLR station was of derelict factories, disused land, and an unwanted, windswept feel to the place. Here we met Rowan a can-do type of guy who was responsible for helping to consult local people on the up and coming London Pleasure Gardens. LPG is the brainchild of a group of companies led by people behind Shangri-La at Glastonbury, and is looking like the project most likely to be realised out of the winners of the Meanwhile London competition launched by Nehwam Council.

The site is a fantastic historic dockland but surrounded by an unusual context; the Listed (apparently untouchable asbestos-laden) mill building, out of scale suburban housing, the dominant Excel Centre that will host a number of Olympic Events, and further afield the Thames and the towers of Canary Wharf. In the face of a seemingly impossibly complex set of site conditions (including 40000 a day crossing the site during the Olympics) LPG proposes a light-touch semi-permanent carnival, which will be open the public at times and ticketed for weekend and events. Their model is 100% privately backed, and includes a music stage in a geodesic dome, a temporary hotel made of caravans, 'wilderness park' with 'architect-designed' pavillions (Rowan seemed confused when asked if architects were involved for most of the other temporary elements!).

The proposals are certainly ambitious, especially given the requirement to be ready by June (a condition of the free lease), but LPG did not appear phased by the tight timescale. This reflected a key aspect of the project; coming from the tradition of festival-making the team behind LPG are expert at programming, haggling and borrowing, getting in the right expertise to 'get on with it', and doing the right amount to 'put on a spectacle' within the limited budget they have (such as the construction techniques of scaffold and hoardings). Whilst these skills are clearly centred around 'event-driven' architecture, they are all skills that many architectural practices could benefit from.

From Pontoon Docks, another DLR ride northwards through Newham took the studio to Stratford, where the impact of the Olympics is immediately apparent from the colourful panel-clad blocks that have sprung up along the main high street. Within the broad spectrum of the architectural profession/discipline it would be hard to find a much greater contrast than between these speculative commercial blocks and the nearby warehouse taken over by the architecture collective 'Assemble'. Here we met Lewis and Louis, our enthusiastic guides to the work of Assemble and two of around 20 young designers and makers that make up the collective, which is predominately Part 1 architecture graduates who met in Cambridge. After graduating and all desperately wanting to do 'something' (note here that working as a Pt 1 CAD monkey for a large practice was not considered as something), they brainstormed derelict space in London, found a disused petrol station and designed and built a temporary 'Cineroleum' all for a miniscule budget of £6000 (mostly their own money!). Directly of the back of this (and Louis' contacts in MUF), they also completed Folly for a Flyover, which won great acclaim within architectural circles for its witty design and cheap DIY construction ethic.

Perhaps the most interesting part of a long (and generous) discussion was the current status of the group; having taken on the warehouse on a temporary (free) lease from the ODA and also having just won a ‘real’ commission to reimagine New Addington High Street, Assemble were in the process of reshaping themselves as a functioning practice, with salaries, invoices and proper decision-making. It was obvious that this process runs the risk of tarnishing their chaotic but defining characteristics (bargain recycled construction, volunteer builders, ‘do anything’ mantra, and pub meetings), and might make the group think hard about whether this type of practice can be maintained as a lifestyle beyond the ‘student days’. However it was fascinating to see a group of 19-20 year olds ‘doing something’ that many in the architectural profession dream about but are too fearful of leaving the security of an established practice.

The third appointment of the day saw us meet up with SSoA Studio 15, who are investigating self-organised practices within the creative melting pot ‘wasteland’ that is Hackney Wick. Beginning as a research project into other self-organised communities, and several of the students seemed to be grappling with the idea of a kind of ‘architectural manifestation’ of a community that didn’t actually require top-down architectural design. To get to the meeting point, a newly formed ]Performance Space[ studio converted from an old plumbers merchant, we traversed the incredible site of the Olympic construction. The scale and pace of change in this area is quite astounding given its proximity to (and often built right over the top of) so much rich history and ‘stuff’. The impact on Hackney Wick is also clear, with the artists in Performance Space already talking about the next cheap and empty area that people were talking about moving towards. There was also the idea raised that the commercial and residential developments being built off the back of the Olympics becoming a future slum, although the almost constant pressure for private housing in London seems to make that unlikely. After a busy visit, the day was appropriately rounded off with a presentation from Andreas on public works, accompanied by fantastic supper (and vodka) by our hosts.

Compass Festival of Live Art, Leeds

Held over three unfortunately miserably wet and windy and days in late November, the Compass Symposium and accompanying live arts festival is a new venture by East Street Arts, festival curator Sarah Spanton and director Annie Lloyd. The programme of events, workshops and discussions set itself apart from other similar arts festivals through on two fronts; its setting in Yorkshire (and the Humber) an area keen to expand its realtively small live arts community, and a strong focus on socially engaged practice. Both of these aspects appealed straight away to the research agenda of RECITE PhD one, and with links between Compass and the Sheffield School of Architecture already established through MArch tutor / fellow researcher Carolyn Butterworth, the decision to attend this exciting-looking 3 days of art just up the road (or train line) seemed like a no-brainer. Unfortunately, other commitments in Sheffield meant that I didnt see a huge amount of performers, and as a result this review focuses on the symposium half of Compass.

While I have a genuine appreciation / interest in live art as a spectator, I sometimes feel that the elusiveness of the language that is often used to describe some the practice is a little difficult for other academic disciplines to access. This was certainly one feeling left by Intimacy and Generosity, a workshop held to question issues around how willing people are to share their deepest feelings, public & private space, one-to-one encounters, and the awkward relationship between contemporary society and the 'intimate'. Although the coordinator Rajni was very skilled at creating a real sense of intimacy within the group, I felt the personal level conversations perhaps restricted a more interesting debate about the wider social context of the issues.

This theme continued at the late afternoon Show & Tell session (where the Pecha Kucha style format quickly broke down reinforcing the cliche of artists being unwilling to stick within the rules). While I was not really in a place to be too critical of the presentations (having failed to find the time to produce one myself) there seemed to be several practioners who either failed to either gauge their audience or were just simply not interested in socially engaged practice! Fortunately many of the others were fascinating, and both Rita's smartphone dance documentation and Rich from Invisible Flock sparked really useful conversations and plenty of ideas.

The trade-off for a friday night back in Sheffield was a very rushed Saturday morning to get to Sensing the City, and after the first day full of discussion it was nice to be told that the workshop would commence with a silent walk. The walk is of course a well used tool for the urbanist-artist, and there was little embellishment here other than the suggestion of a 'perfomative' single file parade, and an instruction to really focus on the relationship between your body and the soundscape. Artist Bob Levene suggested that experiencing the sometimes harsh urban environment in this concious method enables an 'awakening' from the dominant passive modes of experience. A number of aspects of the sound walk, not least the intrusion of the somewhat in-your-face documentor, meant that it somehow fell short of providing an immersive subjection by the environment. I think the fairly linear route to Patrick Studios (and with most of the attendees having already walked there yesterday) made it feel more like a 'route' to a destination rather than a journey or drift. The tone was (dramatically) shifted by Bradley Garrett's ethnographic research into the (sometimes literal) underworld of urban explorers, venturing into Victorian sewers and to the top of half-built skyscrapers. A well-paced delivery of fascinating anecdote and theory mixed with hyper-real photography was well-received, with the suggestion that this activity, apparently 'useless' in capital terms, was a meanwhile use that fell outside or subverted the sensory experiences normally 'on offer in the city. Some of this grandstanding stood him for criticism, particularly the some strong critiques of his method, the overt 'masculinity' of the explorers and the underplayed ethical / political implications of this type of work, particularly when disseminated via the stylised imagery.

Sennet's idea of the regulation and pacification of the body in 'public space', very often for capitalist consumption, is one strong theme that emerged from several of the workshop and informal discussions, and one of the key contributions that can be made by art/performative practices is to be critical / transformative of this situation. Coming from an architecture background (and SSoA in particular) participatory practice, social engagement, intervention, mapping, site, space and are second nature both in terms of design and research, and the wide range of other disciplines that engage (or are now engaging) with the same set of issues is therefore very interesting and may open up space for more collaboration. From the point of view of an architecture trained researcher/practioner, one potential criticism of artists working in urban public space that struck me over the weekend (albeit perhaps a generalisation)is that there seems to be more of a concern about making an impact and not so much interest in following up or developing the situation to develop a more tangible legacy. Legacy could be in terms of feeding back responses to inform policy, establishing new programmes, or proposing wider projects off the back of a performative intervention. Perhaps there just needs to be a better understanding of just how much an architectural toolkit of skills can contribute; it was perhaps telling that the architect-dominated conversations in the third workshop, Intentions and Unitentions, architecture was still thought of by most as being concerned only with static / permanent buildings designed for a paying client.

"This House Believes Schools of Architecture Should Be Dissolved"Project Context / SUAS Debate

Its hard to know exactly what Project Context stand for, if indeed they do have (or need) an overarching political motivation. Their manifesto is deliberately fuzzy or fluid, and their recent impressive efforts in reviewing graduate output are self-titled as both a 'research project' but also a 'mirror'. It is this second aspect that might be most interesting. By making a much bigger noise about what talented graduates of architecture end up doing (or not doing) post-part 2, hopefully some of those responsible at the top of architectural education (heads of school, course leaders and those in admissions) might begin to think more about why so many students feel unequipped for current practice, and why so many are unemployed.

Fluidity is a theme that cropped up again and again in the Project Context & SUAS-organised debate "This House Believes Schools of Architecture Should Be Dissolved". It was interesting that this debate was held at Sheffield, a school that has a reputation for challenging traditional models of architectural practice, though in reality is still part of a red-brick institution, and is still very much bound to conform to the requirements of the RIBA and ARB.

In the event, both sides on the debate began to meld into one, as it became quite apparent that the proposition team very well knew the value of the school of architecture and its graduates (especially in the sheffield mould); lateral thinking, spatially & socially aware, polymaths that developed a huge range of design skills and critical thinking over the 5 or so years they spent in architecture school. In terms of reshaping this model, the consensus was built around the idea that (especially given the construction crash) the route through architectural education needed to be more flexible and much less tunneled towards to become an employed 'architect'. Instead we should be offering different routes (and valuing those routes) to become writers, entrepreneurs, developers, planners, councilors etc. In order to achieve this clearly more work also needs to be done at the top (perhaps wholesale changes at the RIBA) to communicate the value of architectural skills and pull down the artificial barriers that are suffocating the profession. As put forward in the debate by the proposition panel: 'if we are so good at designing buildings, why are only 2% * of new constructions designed by architects?'

Alastair Parvin (Sheffield alumni now working for 00:/) robustly critiqued of the social disconnection in student projects, along with providing the evening with some typically memorable soundbites: 'we don't need active dissolution - if things carry on the way they are Schools of Architecture will dissolve themselves'.

Several other people picked up on the potential contradiction illustrated by this point, which to me became one of the most telling aspects of the evening. If there is a genuine feeling amongst graduates (such as those within Project Context) that the current pedagogy in schools of architecture and the relevance of the skills we acquire for todays market needs questioning - why is the celebration of the 'best' of the graduates (as demonstrated in the Project Context exhibition) still represented by a gallery of beautiful but abstracted representations, or to quote Alastair again; 'Trout farms on Mars'?

(*the source for this stat wasnt given)