here - Architecture Foundation

AF PROJECT SPACE 2009 – 2012
The Architecture Foundation’s Project Space
is a public venue for innovative, critical
and experimental architectural events,
installations and exhibitions. The programme
takes an expanded and cross-disciplinary
approach that seeks to encourage new
modes of exhibition, for experiencing and
debating what architecture is and can be.
Activities in the Project Space
complement the AF’s off-site
programme of talks, screenings, and
public realm initiatives and competitions,
by providing an intimate setting for
the close discussion and exhibition
of innovative and original positions in
architecture, urbanism, art and design
– a street-level public think-tank and
physical space for the exploration of the
global built environment, within the AF’s
Southwark headquarters.
In its first three years, the Project
Space has been a theatre, a restaurant,
a lecture hall and a landscape. Its
continuing programme offers an
expanded take on architecture and the
city, targeting a broad public with an
interest in architecture, art and design,
culture and lifestyle, in parallel to the
AF’s dedicated audience of design
professionals, architects, critics and
students.
Operating as a public window into the
architectural world to an expanded
cultural audience, the AF Project Space
encourages public engagement and
participation in vital conversations
around design, the built environment
and the city, and attracts people to
the Foundation’s headquarters for a
dialogue with the organisation itself.
Image / Moss Your City installation shot: courtesy Guy Archard
AF PROJECT SPACE / SELECTED EXHIBITIONS / P2
Previous Exhibitions
Christmas at Number 42
3 – 20 December 2009
Throughout December 2009
The Architecture Foundation
collaborated with artist, set
designer and mastermind behind
the lauded Pale Blue Door popup restaurant, Tony Hornecker.
Let loose in the AF Project Space,
Hornecker created an immersive
installation for the festive season a surreal London streetscape open
for nightly dinners.
Christmas at Number 42 was on the
surface an average home in an average
London street, complete with integral
contemporary obsessions with all things
modern, fashionable and flat-packed.
Yet all was not as it seemed. Guests
were invited to dig a little deeper,
stay for dinner and meet some of the
street’s revolving community of cabaret
artists.
Fusing dense living urbanism, the
theatricality of neighbourhood gossip à
la Mike Leigh and good quality dining,
Christmas at Number 42 took a look at
what architecture means in the world
of DIY.
Straddling the ground somewhere
between art installation, fantasy-world
set design and festive pop-up eatery,
Christmas at Number 42 is as out-there
as it sounds.
– Wallpaper*, 18 December 2009
Images / Installation shots and diners: courtesy Daniel Hewitt
AF PROJECT SPACE / SELECTED EXHIBITIONS / P3
Previous Exhibitions
Living Architectures / Ila Bêka and Louise
Lemoine 21 January – 26 February 2010
Following our September 2008 UK
Premiere of Koolhaas HouseLife,
which launched the Architecture
on Film series of screenings, The
Architecture Foundation hosted
and initiated the international
unveiling of new work from
HouseLife’s acclaimed filmmakers
Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, with
a video installation of three new
work-in-progress films, focusing
on the lived reality of three icons
of modern architecture: Gehry’s
Vertigo (Guggenheim Bilbao), Xmas
Meier (Jubilee Church, Rome) and
Pomerol, Herzog & de Meuron (189
Hosanna Winery).
A one-off reprise screening of Koolhaas
HouseLife was also held in the Project
Space to accompany the exhibition, to
a sold-out audience.
The exhibition subsequently toured to
the Architecture Centre, Bristol, where
it ran from 18 August - 3 October, 2010.
Supported by DESSO, Colorset
With thanks to auto italia south east,
Olivier Castel, Sam Griffin
The exhibition offered a revealing
examination of iconic architecture
in dialogue with its users; from linedancing grape-pickers to abseiling
window cleaners – exploring
architecture as an experience, rather
than an image.
For London’s architectural community,
which can appear international in its
constituents but inward looking in its
practice, evidence of the AF actively
seeking dialogue with similar institutions
abroad must be seen as an encouraging
sign for debate in the capital….
– Geoff Shearcroft, The Secret Life of
Buildings, Building Design, 5 February
2010
Fantastic. Really enlightening and
worth seeing a great building from two
different perspectives!
– Visitor Comment
The exhibition was co-ordinated to
be shown over the same time period
at New York’s Storefront for Art
and Architecture, in a collaboration
between the institutions upon a parallel
transatlantic exhibition.
Images / Installation shot: courtesy Daniel Hewitt / Film still from Gehry’s Vertigo: courtesy Bêka Films
AF PROJECT SPACE / SELECTED EXHIBITIONS / P4
Previous Exhibitions
Moss Your City / PUSHAK
19 June – 12 August 2010
As the result of an invited
competition from the three
Norwegian practices selected for
the New Architects: Norway_UK
international exchange programme,
PUSHAK were appointed to create
an installation for The Architecture
Foundation’s Project Space.
Launched at the London Festival of
Architecture 2010, the installation
featured a spectacular and
immersive moss landscape, filling
the project space with living form,
woodlant scents, and a new climate.
The New Architects: Norway_UK
exchange programme was a partnership
between the AF and Norsk Form.
This is a really interesting exhibition
that stimulates ideas around creating
a greener city, and aims to inspire
Londoners to get involved with urban
gardening.
– Rebecca English, Blueprint, 25 June
2010
Gorgeous piece. Very innovative use
of space and re-appropriation of
natural landscape for an urban setting.
Wonderfully contemplative.
– Visitor Comment
What a relief and delight to enter the
space and smell the wood and moss,
leaving noise behind. Thank you.
– Visitor Comment
PUSHAK’s approach to design is based
on understanding local conditions
such as climate and available natural
and human resources. Based on these
principles, PUSHAK’s installation
took its inspiration from one of the
focus areas of the 2010 Festival - the
Bankside Urban Forest –to which
a response was solicited in the
competition brief. The installation was
lit by night, turning it into a nocturnal
wonderland, visible from the street.
The Moss Your City Closing Picnic
with 6a Architects and Troika (5
August 2010), closed the exhibition
with a lunchtime discussion in the
moss between Stephanie Macdonald
of 6a Architects and Sebastien Noel
from Troika; presenting 6a’s research
on the use of moss in contemporary
buildings alongside Troika’s projects for
greening the city, and their flora inspired
installations at the World Expo Shanghai
2010.
A catalogue was produced to
accompany the exhibition, edited by
Walpaper* magazine’s Ellie Stathaki.
Supported by Royal Norwegian
Embassy in London, Jackson Coles,
Metropolitan Workshop, Speirs +
Major, Philips, Hive, Isklar
Images / Private view: courtesy Agnese Sanvito / Installation shot: courtesy Guy Archard
AF PROJECT SPACE / SELECTED EXHIBITIONS / P5
Previous Exhibitions
Critical Infrastructures
2 February – 26 March 2011
A promising start to a series of events
at The Architecture Foundation...
The venue also proved to be a more
fruitfiul setting for a discussion into the
growing movement of ‘do-gooding’ in
architecture, and the way in which it
is increasingly ebraced by mainstream
activity, particularly in the USA.
– Levent Kerimol, Building Design,
11 February 2011
A fantastic exhibition, I couldn’t get
enough. So much information and so
much inspiration.
– Visitor comment
Critical Infrastructures: New
American Approaches to Civic
Activism & Research was a public
lecture series and complementary
exhibition at the AF Project Space,
presenting three dynamic American
non-profit organisations together
for the first time in an international
arena – Archeworks (Chicago), the
Center for Land Use Interpretation
(Los Angeles), and the Center for
Urban Pedagogy (New York) –
whose body of work each critiques
and engages with the economic,
legal and political forces shaping
contemporary cities.
Critical Infrastructures was
programmed to respond to the UK’s
socio-economic situation of cultural
cuts and withdrawn governmental
funding. It aimed to share and explore
ideas on how to respond to the UK’s
contemporary crisis of falling public
funding, the increasingly unsubsidised
city and a changing and vulnerable civic
arena, by looking to American models
of organisations who exist outside of
state-funded models; using the work
of these three influential American
organisations as precedents and points
of departure for open discussion
and debate. The unique voices of
Archeworks, CLUI and CUP combined
satire, investigation, teaching and play
– from posters graphically explaining
public policy to bus tours of Los
Angeles’ waste cycle.
The AF Project Space became a
reading room and platform
for debate, offering a transatlantic
perspective on how citizens and built
environment practitioners can engage
in, and with, our impacts upon the
urban and suburban fabric
and civic life.
Each of the three organisations
in the exhibition presented their
work at a dedicated evening event,
in conversation with a UK-based
chairperson for a transatlantic meeting
of minds. All events sold out in advance.
Supported by The Graham
Foundation for Advanced Studies in
the Fine Arts
Images / Installation shot / Damon Rich presenting the work of the Center for Urban Pedagogy: both courtesy Justin Jaeckle
AF PROJECT SPACE / SELECTED EXHIBITIONS / P6
Previous Exhibitions
More Than > A Building? Architecture on Trial
1 – 31 April 2011
More Than > A Building?
Architecture on Trial: Stirling and
Gowan’s Leicester Engineering
Building was a video exhibition,
curated by Joseph Bedford and
designed by vPPR architects, that
critically reviewed and re-evaluated
Stirling and Gowan’s celebrated
1963 Leicester University
Engineering Building through a
multi-faceted portrait, composed
of insights from a diverse and
influential cast of architects,
historians and critics, as well as the
building’s own daily users.
New documentary films and video
interviews with James Gowan, Michael
Wilford, Peter Eisenman, Charles
Jencks and Leon Krier, among the
building’s users and many others,
placed the Engineering Building on
trial, to stage an investigation into
both the building and the very idea of
architecture - asking just when it is that
a building can be said to have become
architecture, and the myriad ways in
which a building can be interpreted and
perceived.
Very nice show, I look forward to
getting stuck into the video footage
– James Pallister, Senior Editor,
Architects’ Journal
historians and users to question on
what terms the Engineering Building
can be considered More Than a
building? Notable speakers included
Joseph Bedford, Tony Fretton and Sam
Jacob and Kieran Long.
The exhibition was programmed to
coincide with, and respond to, James
Stirling’s major retrospective at Tate
Britain, and the AF’s co-hosting of
a SuperCrit event there on Stirling’s
Staatsgallerie, Stuttgart, in partnership
with Westminster University.
Supported by Richard Rogers, Mark
Darbon, Lennart Grut, Ivan Harbour
and Michael Davies, Rogers Stirk
Harbour + Partners; The Thames
Wharf Charitable Trust; J Robert
Hillier
Within the exhibition, a central arena
offered a space for debate and events,
in which a programmed series of
lectures, screenings, and conversations
enabled the public, architects, critics,
Images / Installation shots: courtesy Daniel Hewitt / Jessica Reynolds (vPPR) and Joseph Bedford: courtesy Justin Jaeckle
AF PROJECT SPACE / SELECTED EXHIBITIONS / P7
Previous Exhibitions
20 Houses: A New Residential Landscape
10 June – 14 July 2011
This exhibition in the AF Project
Space showcased the projects
of the twenty studios featured in
the 2011 Wallpaper* Architects
Directory, the ‘ultimate little black
book to the world’s most promising
young practices.’ Each practice
was given an open brief to design
the ultimate rural retreat. These
twenty houses were designed to
be flexible and functional, but
also formally and technically
innovative, sitting on a speculative
isolated countryside site. The only
sanction was the need for the
homes to touch the ground lightly,
with minimum disruption to the
landscape.
The exhibition united the featured
architects, showcasing all twenty
bespoke homes in a single show.
The models were presented on a
minimal sculptural structure developed
by Wallpaper*, based on an initial
abstract landscape idea by emerging
UK practice Naja de Ostos, and
enhanced by a specially designed
imaginary lighting environment created
by specialists Speirs + Major.
As part of the exhibition programme,
Wallpaper* and The Architecture
Foundation invited a selection of the
practices from the 2011 Directory to
take part in a two-part talks series,
using the theme of built/unbuilt to
explore the relationship between real
world commissions and the ideas and
approaches that arose out of the open
brief for the Directory commission.
In partnership with Wallpaper*
Great stuff! Interesting to spot
differences in styles by the architect’s
geographical background. Also some
brilliant model making ideas!
– Visitor Comment
Creative and intriguing, really redefining ideas of temporal home.
– Visitor Comment
Images / Installation shots: courtesy Anna Stathaki / TAKA presenting their work in the exhibition: courtesy Justin Jaeckle
AF PROJECT SPACE / SELECTED EXHIBITIONS / P8
Previous Exhibitions
Post Works: Just the Flipside of the Wall
30 September – 29 October 2011
Just the Flip Side of the Wall saw
Melissa Appleton and Matthew
Butcher (Post Works) create a new
environment within the Project
Space that acted as a frame for
a series of events exploring the
relationship between architecture,
the city and performance, as well
as an exhibition in its own right.
In collaboration with artist Edwin
Burdis.
Post Works reconfigured the AF Project
Space with a series of theatrical props
and architectural characters including
rigging, curtains, lighting and screens,
creating a backdrop that developed and
transformed through re-configuration
and addition throughout the exhibition’s
programme of live events and
interventions. Key to this exhibition was
the idea that architecture can activate
events and recompose and reframe
content; whether in the city itself or a
gallery environment.
I loved the display. Thank you. It was so
funny as well.
– Visitor Comment
The physical elements of the exhibition
were transported to the AF from 100%
Design, where Post Works had been
commissioned to design the central
bar for the trade fair, following an
AF-run invited competition. Key to
their proposal was a creative afterlife
for the bar’s architectural ‘characters’,
and exhibition at the AF allowed these
elements to be re-configured and given
a new life in a gallery context.
The film No Stop Statue Machine
offered a pyschedelic centre-point
for the exhibition, offering well-know
London landmarks – from the Hayward
Gallery to Bruce Mclean’s Liverpool St
sculpture – a voice. Golden models of
these characters then also appeared
in the show, in a new version of Post
Works’ Stage City.
An array of artists and creative
practitioners was asked to respond to
the exhibition’s themes and changeable
environment, including graphic knitwear
duo Cooperative Designs, author
Rachel Newsome, Edwin Burdis’ band
Longmeg, and Post Works affiliated
architectural publication P.E.A.R.
Supported by 100% Design.
With thanks to Ardent Scaffolding
LTD, Pixley Printhouse
Images / Installation shot: courtesy Daniel Hewitt / Cooperative Designs weekend: courtesy Justin Jaeckle / Stage City characters detail: courtesy designboom
AF PROJECT SPACE / SELECTED EXHIBITIONS /P9
Previous Exhibitions
Young Architect of the Year Award 2011
4 – 26 November 2011
The Architecture Foundation
partnered with the Young Architect
of the Year Award to exhibit the
longlist of this influential annual
prize, with a special focus on the
six practices shortlisted for 2011:
George Saumarez Smith (ADAM
Architecture), Foster Lomas, IPT
Architects, Jonathan Hendry
Architects, RA Projects and
RCKa.
In a special event on 7 November, the
five shortlisted practices presented
their work to a public audience, in an
event chaired by Building Design editor
Ellis Woodman.
In partnership with Building Design
and Autodesk. With special thanks to
Doublet and Gemini Hire and Sales
With exhibition design by 2010 YAYAshortlisted practice Moxon Architects,
with graphic designer Helios Capdevila,
the exhibition offered a celebration
and survey of the UK’s most exciting
emerging practices. It was delivered in
partnership with Building Design.
The long strip of paper created a really
interesting and playful space and it was
fun to read the writing when it curved
around corners.
– Visitor comment
Images / Installation shot: courtesy Daniel Hewitt / 3D scan of exhibition: courtesy Moxon/ScanLab / Ellis Woodman (BD) introducing the YAYA shortlist’s presentations: courtesy Justin Jaeckle
AF PROJECT SPACE / SELECTED EXHIBITIONS / P10
Previous Exhibitions
SHIFTS
9 May – 9 June 2012
circumstances on architecture’s
present and future, through film,
models, and text.
Exploring the fundamental changes
that the culture and practice of
architecture are undergoing worldwide
as consequence of seismic political
and financial challenges, the show
plays with the formats of a traditional
architectural exhibition to speculate
upon how we got here, and what
comes next.
Beautifully presented with lovely
production values! Lots to chew on...
– Visitor Comment
Fantastic representation of data –
Thank you very much!
– Visitor Comment
Rotterdam/Copenhagen-based
Powerhouse Company and
critic and architectural historian
Hans Ibelings (the Architecture
Observer) presented SHIFTS:
The Economic Crisis and its
Consequences for Architecture;
an evocative, polemical exhibition
illustrating the far-reaching
impacts of new economic
A series of events punctuated and
expanded the exhibition, including
the SHIFTS publication launch midway through the show, with Nanne
de Ru (Powerhouse Company), Hans
Ibelings (Architecture Observer),
Alice Fung (00:/, Hub Westminster)
and Christopher Choa (AECOM), in
conversation with Peter Buchanan. The
UK Premiere of documentary The Dubai
in Me and a conversation with Owen
Hatherley about his book, A New Kind
of Bleak, were also programmed.
Supported by The Embassy of the
Kingdom of The Netherlands
Images / Installation shot: courtesy Justin Jaeckle / Detail of ‘Bubbles’ model: courtesy Christian van der Kooy
AF PROJECT SPACE / FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS / P11
Current and Forthcoming Exhibitions
Bureau Spectacular: Three Little Worlds
23 June – 25 August 2012
Akihisa Hirata: Tangling
15 September – 17 November 2012
For his first exhibition outside of
North America, Chicago-based
architect Jimenez Lai’s Bureau
Spectacular will transform the AF’s
Project Space with an inhabitable
installation; creating a modular
hotel of ‘super-furniture’.
‘Tangling’ is the first international
solo exhibition of the work of
emerging Japanese architect
Akihisa Hirata. It will take the form
of an immersive 1:1 installation – a
contorted loop – which will distill
his architecture’s essence into a
large-scale experiential structure.
Riffing on notions of privacy and
publicity, and the contemporary
performance of living in public,
Jimenez himself will call the installation
home over the London Festival of
Architecture period, before a series
of invited guests take up residence in
exchange for hosting public events,
over the course of the exhibition.
Bureau Spectacular describe their
strategy as one of making 'absurd
stories about fake realities that invite
enticing possibilities,' and for the AF
they will create a walk-in cartoon, with
reference to Lai’s ongoing work in
graphic novels.
Image / Installation render: courtesy Bureau Spectacular
Presented upon and amongst this
structure will be over a hundred study
models and conceptual sketches, plus
an interview with Hirata and films of
his projects, illustrating applications of
Hirata’s theories of ‘tangling’ to built
works and experimental installations.
Hirata views architecture and ecology
as a complex tangle – in terms of form,
function and the relationship between
artifice and nature. This exhibition will
explore Hirata’s philosophy and suggest
possible design approaches and
concepts for architecture to use in
approach of its, and our, own
futures. Curated by Naomi Shibata and
The Architecture Foundation.
Image / Installation render: courtesy Akihisa Hirata Architecture Office
AF PROJECT SPACE / SELECTED EVENTS / P12
Previous Events
Fritz Haeg: Sundown Salon – Talking About
The Future 17 October 2009
2009 SZHK Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism
\ Architecture 28-29 November 2009
The Architecture Foundation
presented a day of activities with
architect Fritz Haeg and a host
of collaborators, from within a
geodesic tent pitched in the Project
Space for Haeg’s first ever UK
Sundown Salon.
The AF hosted two consecutive
evening events at the AF Project
Space in conjunction with the
curatorial team of the 2009
Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City
Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture:
City Mobilization, to preview
these themes with a selection of
contributors – some of Europe’s
most dynamic young architects and
artists.
At the AF Project Space the tent
served as domestic lounge, reading
library, meeting hall, teahouse, and
headquarters for the day as Haeg
assembled his latest project, A Library
For The Future, posing the question:
“What book would you choose to take
us forward?”
The Sundown Salons are a 6-year
ongoing curatorial narrative of events,
happenings and performances that
have previously been held by Haeg at
his Los Angeles home, a geodesic dome
and subterranean cave.
Image / Courtesy Daniel Hewitt
Participants included: Biennale Chief
Curator Ou Ning; Danish superarchitect Bjarke Ingels; Parisian artist
Didier Fiuiza Faustino; Beatrice Galilee,
Curator, SZHK Biennale; Austria’s
feld72; London’s Aberrant; Rotterdam’s
Alexander Sverdlov; and Kieran Long,
Editor-in-Chief, Architects’ Journal /
The Architectural Review.
Image / Courtesy Daniel Hewitt
AF PROJECT SPACE / SELECTED EVENTS / P13
Previous Events
Faith in the City: The Mosque in the
Contemporary Urban West 11 November 2010
Sounding Space: Sam Griffin – The Olduvai
Cliff 16 January 2012
Faith in the City aimed to further
the discussion of the social, spatial,
political and symbolic role of faith
buildings in Europe and the USA,
through a close exploration of the
mosque’s changing role in the
‘Western’ world.
Launching a new series of events
exploring the relationship between
sound and space, an installation
from artist Sam Griffin, in
collaboration with musicians Guy
Wood and Jo Wills, flooded The
Architecture Foundation’s Project
Space with a sea of bass.
In light of the banning of minarets in
Switzerland by public referendum, and
the furor in America’s response to the
siting of a new Islamic culture centre
in downtown New York, architecture’s
political and social role has become a
renewed site of contest. Using such
examples of the challenges facing
contemporary religious buildings as
a catalyst for further debate, the
symposium opened with a keynote
presentation from the architect of
the “Ground Zero Mosque,” before a
strongly international panel debated the
many issues. The project culminated
in a documentary publication. Project
supported by OpenVizor and Arts &
Islam.
Image / Courtesy OpenVizor/Rehan Jamil
For one night only – and on the day
statistically noted to be the most
depressing of the year – the AF
reverberated at 111Hz, a frequency
known to induce endorphins in
human physiology. Sound was used to
transform the physical environment,
creating a temporary, invisible, yet
penetrating architecture.
Griffin’s sonic topography reacted to
the gallery space to create a changing
aural landscape as much felt as heard,
as its frequencies – carefully calibrated
in response to the specific dimensions
of the AF Project Space – refracted in
stereo around the space.
Image / Courtesy Mike Hemy