MArch Unit 15 :: Post – Continuity Architectures: 21st Century Follies and Fun Palaces :: Nic Clear / Hyun Jun Park :: 2016/17

u15_heritage-gallery_scan

The sequence becomes a jagged collage of fragments of explosions, crashes, physical lunges, and violently accelerated motions. There is no sense of spatiotemporal continuity; all that matters is delivering a continual series of shocks to the audience.

Steven Shaviro

(Note to architects: You thought that you could ignore Junkspace, visit it surreptitiously, treat it with condescending contempt or enjoy it vicariously . . . because you could not understand it, you’ve thrown away the keys . . . But now your own architecture is infected, has become equally smooth, all-inclusive, continuous, warped, busy, atrium-ridden . . . )

Rem Koolhaas

A form of spatial disjunction has occurred within the built environment under the rubric of neo-liberalism, physical space has become absorbed as part of a wider set of informational and economic networks and relations that combine virtual, augmented and mixed realities.

This new spatial regime requires new forms of measurement, calibration and notation, traditional forms of orthography need to be questioned in terms of their ability to generate, develop and represent architectural possibilities for these mutated spaces of late capitalism.

In film, space is no longer organised around the relationships of classical mis-en-scene, through the use of unconventional cinematography, c.g.i and non-linear editing techniques the type of coherent, contiguous and consistent spatial narrative is eclipsed, this has been described as post-continuity cinema.

In his essay “Junkspace,” which reads like a frenzied stream-of-consciousness SF story, Rem Koolhaas creates a vivid indictment of a culture trapped by its own hubris, technological addiction, and vapidity. Junkspace is both fragmented and homogeneous, it is lacks continuity and is at the same time ubiquitous and in it we are completely surrounded and yet totally alone. Junkspace describes a form of post-continuity architecture.

To combat the totalities of Junkspace, and to immerse ourselves in it, Unit 15 will be engaging with a landscape of flows and spaces of desire through the deployment of multiple vectors, exemplified by the nefarious world of the Architectural Folly and the scurrilously irreverent Fun Palace. These vectors will be organised and curated into an exhibition to be part of next years London Festival of Architecture located in and around the Old Royal Naval College and the Queens House.

Stage 1: 21st Century Follies

Unit 15 will create 21st Century Architectural Follies based on the literal interpretation of their own drawings.

Stage 2: 21st Century Fun Palace

Unit 15 has agreed to take part in PolyArk 4 run by the RIBA and linking over 30 International Schools of Architecture.

Stage 3: 21st Century Representations

Unit 15 will curate and exhibit their work in the University of Greenwich Heritage Gallery next June as part of the London Festival of Architecture

At the start of year conference Nic Clear will be presenting a lecture on Radical Drawings.

Throughout the first semester Nic Clear will be giving a series of seminars as part of his third year dissertation group on the relationship between film and architecture.

For nearly twenty years Unit 15 has been making 21st century architecture using film and animation to generate, develop and present their proposals.

Reading

Clear, Nic, Drawing Time, in Spiller, N. (ed) Drawing Architecture, AD Profile 210, Wiley, Chichester 2013.

Jameson, Frederic. The Geo-Political Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System, Indiana, 2009

Koolhaas, Rem. “Junkspace.” The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping. Ed. Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas, and Leong Sze Tsung. Cambridge MA: Taschen, 2001. 408-21

Lefebvre, Henri. – The Production of Space, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991.

Martin, Richard. – ‘The Architecture of David Lynch’, Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.

Shaviro, Steven. – Post Cinematic Affect, Zero Books, 2010.

Isozaki, Arata, Price Cedric. Taki, Koji. Osaka Follies, Architectural Association, 1991

Reference Films

The Story of Film: An odyssey. (2012) Directed by Mark Cousins, [DVD] UK: Network.

The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema 1, 2, 4: Presented by Slavoj Zizek. (2007) Film. Directed by Sophie Fiennes. [DVD] UK: P Guide Ltd. ICA Projects Ltd.

The Century of the Self (2002), Directed by Adam Curtis, BBC Films.