Park Life - Exploring the Way Out West festival in Gothenburg

Way Out West is the archetypal big festival but differs due to its non rural greenfield setting, instead held in Slottsskogen, Gothenburg’s Hyde Park (if Hyde Park had a zoo and forest). The proximity of the park in relation to the city’s housing means no music will be blaring out of the park after 11pm but acts will instead head to Gothenburg’s clubs to play on into the early hours of the morning where their music will be isolated by the walls of the venues. There is also no campsite therefore reducing the footprint of damage done to the park and boosting business for Gothenburg’s hostels and hotels who must appreciate this model as much as the residents that inhabit the perimeter of Slottsskogen and  the festival goers who are spared long queues to the showers in the morning. The only downside being that festival goers are forbidden to bring their own alcohol inside and must purchase it from within the festivals fences. You could think of these devices as a way to maximise profits but they also provide an alternative to the grime that usually goes hand in hand with a large festival by ensuring all revelers would have beds and showers thus providing everyone with the opportunity to start each day fresh faced and ready to go, whether or not anyone feels the need to take advantage of this is another matter.

Day 1 

Thursday had arrived and after passing through the main entrance we found ourselves in the middle of soulful Albama Shakes. Instantly inspired by their conviction and strength of their music I felt I had suddenly been dropped into the festival. The next door to open took into a psychedelic world with Tame Impala as my guide. Their smooth riffs made all the more trippy by the appearance of a US, less unidentified and more quadrocopter with neon lights, Kevin Parker’s attempted to connect with it ET style, but ultimately never able to reach the dizzying heights of his robotic companion and its pilots ability to tease.

The night fell and as the sound dissipated from the stages of Slottsskogen people headed to venues of the aptly named Stay Out West. We headed to see rapper cross-dressing Mykki Blanco who was performing in the Clarion Hotel, one of Gothenburg’s most expensive establishments. Once through the queue we entered the room which was possibly the cleanest music venue I’ve ever stepped foot in. The low ceiling and odd bounce of carpet under my feet reeked of business conferences rather than a space that had seen it’s fair share of gigs yet nevertheless I was intrigued to see how this space would face up to a rapper the likes of which Sweden had never seen before. The result was not well at all. The bass was non-existent which meant the music lacked any punch, exacerbated by the carpet and soft furnishings present in the space, perhaps it was a conscious choice of materials enforced by the hotel to shield it’s customers or perhaps the venue would have been better suited to a less bass dependent genre of music. Dripping in sweat and topless, Blanco maneuvered into the crowd then up on to the bar to saved what was definitely not an aural assault with an inspired performance. DJ Rashad and Spinn came on and seemed to be ideal to see the night out too but the room quickly emptied and I was left feeling underwhelmed in masses of space surrounded by the props that were thrown into the now non existent crowd. Encouraged by my friends we left and headed home.

Day 2 

A comfortable bed, a shower and a good hearty breakfast left us in good stead for the day that was to ensue. We headed towards the main arenas only to walk past a giant disco ball on a crane, momentarily intrigued then recalling Giorgio Morodor was to make an appearance we realised what we had stumbled upon. The vibe was amazing, considering it was August in Sweden the weather was fine with the sun shining down on us all and with the absurd giant disco ball it was impossible to resist the feel good synths playing while being marshalled by Giorgio who seemed to be orchestrating the crowd with his finger and then regaling us with his voice via a vocoder. Our initial plan to stay for 30 minutes escalated into a few hours, having the knock on effect of us missing Angel Haze’s and Roudrigez’s sets.

Giorgio Morodor

During the night we headed to Nefertiti, a traditional club this with an even lower ceiling than that in the Clarion due to it being a basement venue and caught Svensk Bas, a record label specialising in bass heavy sounds, and this time the bass was anything but lacking.

Some friends asked if we wanted to head to an after party, not one to refuse we headed on an excursion that I would soon realise I was not prepared for in the slightest. I questioned the location of the venue but no one seemed to know exactly where it was so after a lot of conferring with google maps we took a tram to get somewhat closer to our destination. We departed with almost everyone else on the tram at a peaceful residential setting under the soft glow of street lights. Swarms of people all headed in the same direction in waves to higher ground and then to some obscure steps leading up into the woods when eventually the street lights gave way to the black of the moonless night sky. The scene would not be out of place in any zombie flick. Nothing was visible for what could have easily been perceived as a period of 1-3 hours, only the sound of those making their way back from our intended destination could be heard, their cackling laughs, screams and foreboding warnings of “there’s nothing up there”, “where are you going?”, and “everyone’s left” rang in our ears but we decided to persevere with the promise of alcohol and party. There was a stage during this journey where, whilst sobering up and continuing our walk into darkness, not much was said and we all silently brooded over the decision to embark on this journey only to be interrupted occasionally by one of us hearing phantom party sounds which, on closer inspection, turned out to be the rustling of branches, chirping, the odd howl and thuds made by those on the descent back from their pilgrimage.

Alas eventually the phantom sounds turned into the real unmistakable chirping of tweeters and thump of woofers, light bulbs appearing, at first in isolation and then linked together by a chain strewn through the foliage that acted as a canopy over our heads effectively isolating us from the night sky. To the right of us lay a sudden drop into what I can only recall as a large lake and around us lay the festival goers who were looking for the late night outdoor comradery and music that they weren’t meant to find during Way Out West. Unfortunately for us the alcohol had stopped flowing and although the Mars Bars and Twix’s looked appealing sitting idly on a foldable table I couldn’t bring myself to believe the woman standing guard over the chocolatey goodness who tried to convince us they would be restocked within the hour. The thought of an entourage carrying crates of beer up the same path we’d just trodden didn’t seem feasible and so it was there and then I decided my night was over, even the van the woman stood in front of and the fact that the dj shack and lighting was probably driven there couldn’t dispel my mind that the promises of beer weren’t empty promises conjured to keep us trapped at the top of this mountain by a siren in a never ending party where the drinks didn’t not flow. The crowd was littered around the floor, some embracing the current stage of their high, others chatting & reveling in the achievement of reaching this after party in the sky and some tired from the days events, and possibly lack of more beer, sleeping on ground. The music was playing but only served as background noise to the social gathering that ensued. A completely unauthorised illegal gathering of people who didn’t want the party to stop, all in little not so sunny Gothenburg.
The walk back down proved very stimulating, either because we were moving downhill or perhaps just in the knowledge we would be able to finally rest our aching legs. Taking the descent in our strides we celebrated our achievement by taunting those still making their way up, even meeting a stumped Aussie on the way embracing his nationality by wearing a stereotypical cork hat, mainly confused as to why flocks of people were heading down we ensured him that if he wanted to party that up and into the sky was the only place to go.

Reaching the top of the mountain

  Day 3 

Packed full of music, we listened to some of it then headed to another ‘Illegal’ party in the woods. By now the main stages were the savoury part of our day, wholesome good family fun, and the night was the sugary delight that came after, full of debauchery and all that comes with it.

Friday consisted of GOAT, with their energetic tribal style one can only help but be mesmerized swinging to the beat. We missed James Blake for Danny Brown whose energy and stage presence left us wanting more. Truly giving the crowd his all and feeding off the energy given back to him. The night was finished off Disclosure. An apt end to the night, we arrived late and decided to utilise the empty space at the back of the tent to bounce around to their beats and take in the light show. It was definitely one of if not the highlight of Way out West.

The Knife

The end of the performance marked the end of Way out West but for us and many others it was just the beginning of the night. Some of the friends I was with were invited to DJ at another party in the woods and with a playlist consisting of trap music in hand we headed to another non descript forest scene, this time luckily for us it wasn’t located at the precipice of a geological rock formation. This time, on the side of a hill with a steep incline but only a few hundred metres from society. The DJ booth consisted of a plastic tarpaulin that was hung from a tree and protected the sound system. The refreshments were provided from a single story brick building located at the bottom of the hill and we were served through a set of bars that protected the money and alcohol from any opportunists. I seemed to have free reign of the supplies for some reason and found myself over encumbered with refreshments for the night. The weather made a turn for the worst yet this didn’t dissuade the crowd. The trap music received a few complains for its misogynist content but it continued on into the early hours of the morning, with back to back sets. The night seemed to fly by and at around 6am I head with a few others to attempt breakfast at a hotel but we didn’t arrive at our destination due to the indecisive passengers in the Volvo Estate and arrived back to the party during daylight and to my surprise to find the party still going, not so strong and on it’s last legs but nevertheless it was there in what resembled a mud pit rather than a hill.

All in all it was a great festival. Not having to slum it in a tent made a great change and the alternative to the roulette game of trying to get into a Stay out West club was much preferred. Seeing the quiet town of Gothenburg suddenly transformed with an influx of people from around the world was great and is something that I'm looking forward to relive next year!

***

Mandeep Singh is a co-founder and editor of PAPER and is currently working at Wilkinson Eyre Architects in London.

Support PAPER magazine and the Visualising Architecture exhibition

Our names are Samuel Michaelsson, Hugo Losman and Mandeep Singh. Together we are running the architecture journal 'PAPER magazine' (Platform for Architectural Projects, Essays & Research). It was founded in 2011 by us, while studying at the University of Westminster in London. So far we have published nine issues and a compilation of small pamphlets containing shorter essays about architecture as well as longer interviews with interesting people such as Iain Sinclair, Geoff Manaugh and RIBA bronze medal winnner Ness Lafoy.

PAPER magazine is also part of Elias Redstone's world touring 'Archizines' project and is currently being displayed in Shanghai. We are a non profit organisation run by young people with a background in architecture.

In the end of May we are putting together and curating an exhibition at Frilagret in Gothenburg, Sweden. It is called 'Visualising Architecture' and will display work by some of the most prominent visualisation artists and architects today, exhibiting a broad range of architectural representation and illustration. Listed below are the exhibitors: Peter Guthrie - architect and visualiser based in London and Sweden

MIR - visualisation firm from Bergen, Norway

Ness Lafoy - architecture graduate and winner of the RIBA bronze medal

Factory Fifteen - animation and film studio based in Brixton, London

To coincide with the exhibition we are also launching the next issue of PAPER, Visualising Architecture, which will also act as a catalogue for the exhibition. We have interviewed the above named artists for the catalogue and it will also feature essays and texts by the following contributors:

Johan Linton - Chalmers University

David Ottosson - Lunds University

Victoria Watson - University of Westminster

Samuel Michaelsson

Owen D. Pomery

Thomas Hillier & Pascal Bronner

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To make this edition of PAPER possible we are now looking for your help! 

You can show your support by donating on our crowdfunding website.

Ruff, Rugged & Raw - An interview with RUFFMERCY

As part of an interview series exploring the relationship between design and music, PAPER have spoken to several artists whose work is heavily influenced or connected to music. First off is visual artist 'Ruff Mercy'. In the interview below we are discussing his background and breaking down his work methods and inspirations. This interview series will be featured in the forthcoming PAPER issue 'Music and Architecture', set to be released this autumn.

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PAPER: What’s your background, how did you get into visuals and graphics?

RUFFMERCY: I have always been into art since I was small, and as I got older I discovered that I was pretty good at it (and not much else). I don't think it crossed my mind to do anything else, I just knew I wanted to follow that route. After school I went to university to study illustration, whilst there I dabbled in animation, mainly stop motion stuff.

P: How would you describe your style?

RM: RRR: Ruff, Rugged & Raw.

P: You’ve done some work for Ministry of Sound Australia, and electronic music seems like a fitting genre that is open to visuals accompanying the beats. Most of the work in your portfolio however are music videos for Hip hop artists, do you think that certain genres or musical styles translate into visuals better than others?

RM: I would love to make more videos for electronic artists, it's something I plan to do. I listen to that genre quite a lot and at the minute I play Shigeto almost once a week. I would love to work with him. The reason that I've done so many urban videos is because I've had a passion for Hip hop since I was 13 years old kid blasting Public Enemy's 'Yo! Bum Rush the Show'. I listen to a lot of different genres but Hip hop was the first one that hit me like 'POW' when I was young, and it stuck with me to this day. I didn't plan on doing mainly this genre but when you do one and you're lucky and people like it you get asked again and again. The first video I came out with as RUFFMERCY was for Blu x Flying Lotus, this was a perfect track for me. I loved the combination of Hip hop and Electronica. I'm drawn towards heavy tracks with that kind of energy.

Blu x Flying Lotus - BNG

P: In many of your videos you highlight certain words and phrases from the lyrics. In your video for ‘Numbers On The Boards’ (Book & Bronze Bloodsport Remix) by Pusha T for example, I find it interesting that some of the vocal samples in the beat appear alongside the lyrics. This way they play a part of the song in a way that they hadn’t if they weren’t visualised. It reminds me a bit of screwed and chopped music from Houston as well as Ghetto Tech from Detroit where elements in the music (lyrics usually) are repeated and chopped up so that they are imprinted into the listeners ears. I guess in a way you’re doing something similar but visually through graphics. What can great visuals add to a track in terms of depicting the mood and atmosphere of the beat and lyrics? (‘Blue Daisy presents Dahlia Black - Fuck A Rap Song’ for me is a great example of the visuals doing just this).

Blue Daisy presents Dahlia Black 'Fuck A Rap Song'

RM: Yeah, I love picking out the words from tracks that stand out to me. I love drawing them, as I'm always doodling words on my desk and napkins. The rise of the 'lyric video' however, has ruined that for me. I hate the idea of a lyric video (haha). Also, a lot of people have been trying to get me to stop writing lyrics in my videos which pisses me off. So I'll probably keep doing a little here and there, fuck 'em. Love your chopped and screwed analogy though. I never thought of that before, but yes, it's the same thing, tapping into the subconscious. I also love dropping in words not from the song, and even lyrics from other songs. Possibly the geeks and heads will see it and get the references.

P: When I first saw your visuals I thought of Basquiat in some respects. A lot of his work is covered in fragmented writing which gives the impression to have been painted almost effortlessly, similar to the way your graphics are depicted in the videos. I read in another interview that you never redo a line or a stroke but move on to the next frame, do you think that this way of working is vital to achieve the final result?

RM: It goes without saying that i'm a huge Basquiat fan. I didn't set out thinking 'yeah I love Basquiat, let me copy that', I saw an exhibition some 13 years ago and was blown away. I think his images have stuck with me since then and have definitely influenced my work. I don't know, I'm feeling like a cheap knock off right now. I think the main thing that I get from his work is seeing all the fragmented images and text together, it feels like seeing my brain on paper and also the looseness of it all. It's very graphical but oh so loose.. Can't beat it! 

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Yeah, I try to stick to that rule of not going back and correcting anything. I have broken that rule a couple of times but I have always been happier with the ones where I stuck to the rule. You ask whether it's vital to achieve the final result - I like to think that it is, but for me it's more important to feel loose and not so precious about it, that mistakes are okay. I have spent a lot of time in the past trying to be a perfectionist with work and I wanted to break away from that. I hope that the viewer feels the looseness but I reckon a lot of people (especially cell animators) probably think I'm a bit shit (haha).

P: When re-watching your videos I tend to pause and play every other frame to see the graphics as still images and to study them in detail. After I started an animation and 3D graphics course at college I began to really appreciate frames and understand how they finally become a sequence. The fact that every second in an animation is built up from 24 or 25 frames (depending on the format) is something that one rarely reflects over, but for you and many others in this field this is the reality in which you work. Still, in your creations, the fluidity and flow of the graphics is vital. How do you manage to keep the whole picture in mind whilst working at such a fragmented level?

RM: Ah, welcome to a world where 10 seconds can mean a day. I'm both lazy and hardworking. I'm lazy in the sense I can't be bothered to plan, yet I'm hardworking in the sense I'll sit for hours upon hours drawing. So how do I keep the whole picture in mind? With the hand drawn stuff I don't, I just draw what I feel that day till it's done.

House Shoes - Danny Brown

P: What other artists inspire you?

Right now I'm thinking: Basquiat, Keith Haring, Blu, Run The Jewels, David M Helman, Steve Pilling, Kaws, Cleon Peterson, Jason Jagel.

P: What makes the music video such an interesting platform for you to work with?

RM: Freedom, especially on the low budget ones, the ones where no one tells me what to do. They are my favourite and funnily enough, they seem to be the ones people like the most.

P: Would you consider moving into a different format in the future, maybe a short film or something completely different?

RM: Yes, I really want to make a mini series based around music. That's the goal, I'm just trying to find the time to do it. Watch this space!

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Ruffmercy was interviewed by Samuel Michaëlsson.

Have a look at RUFFMERCY's work on his website.

Visualising Architecture - call for papers

On May the 24th the exhibition Visualising Architecture will be opening at Frilagret in Gothenburg, Sweden. It is organized by PAPER magazine and will exhibit a wide typology of architectural visualisation, exploring and analyzing the current climate.

We have collected material from writers, students and tutors, as well as interviewed several leading artists in the field such as Peter Guthrie and RIBA bronze medal winner Ness Lafoy. This will all be featured in a publication that is to be sold in various architectural bookshops after the exhibition.

There is still space for more contributions however, so if you are interested in architectural visualisation in any form: renders, models or drawings, please get in touch to be a part of the exhibition catalogue.

Word limit is between 500-1500 words and the topic is architectural visualisation.

Deadline for submissions are at end of March.

Please email samuel.michaelsson@gmail.com if you're interested.

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A London Trilogy: The Films of Saint Etienne

If you haven't seen the films by Paul Kelly and Saint Etienne, please do watch them. The films explore and document the ever-changing nature of London over the span of nearly 10 years. The films are beautifully shot and accompanied by the music of Saint Etienne, they also explore film as a medium and music's role in how we perceive and remember spaces and places.

Finisterre (2003)
What Have You Done Today Mervin Day? (2005)
This Is Tomorrow (2007)

Visualising Architecture - an exhibition by PAPER magazine

coming in 2014.

Composition and materiality - An interview with visualisation artist Peter Guthrie.

Interview coming soon.

Call for PAPER!

PAPER is slowly starting up again this autumn! We're now looking for contributions from students and other people interested in writing about architecture, art, design or music.

Deadline is at the end of the year, 21 December 2013 so there's plenty of time.

These are the proposed topics for this autumn/winter:

• Music
• Illustrating the city 
• Visualization in architecture

Email samuel.michaelsson@gmail.com if any of this sounds interesting and you'd like to contribute!

Exercises in Style - Reworked

In the 1930’s Raymond Queneau got the idea for his seminal work Exercices de style, while he was listening to a concert in which Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge was performed. He realised that the piece was divided into segments, which were all variations of the same theme. He was convinced that the same logic could be applied to a literary piece, and around 1946 he had composed 99 variations of the same theme. The story is simple; on a crowded Paris bus the narrator observes a funnily dressed man accusing another passenger of deliberately pushing him. A seat becomes empty and the man sits down. In the second scene the man is in a different part of Paris once again spotted by the narrator. He is advised by a friend to sew on an extra button on his overcoat. This story is then repeated 99 times in 99 different ways and styles. 

Rather than looking at these literary exercises as purely an experiment in style, I believe that it is more interesting to analyse them from a perspective of limitations. By representing a scene, whether it is through drawing, collaging or other  ways of visualization, we are constantly limiting ourselves through these tools and methods. Many times limitations are considered to be negative, but I think that Raymond Queneau shows in his book the wonderful potential of restricting yourself when telling a story. It allows you to focus entirely on the idea that is being conveyed. This way of thinking can be extended to situations where limitations are not self imposed. Whether these limitations are geographical, economical or practical, it is equally important to see the potential in them and use that to your advantage. In the context of the architectural publication, it is the way that each zine individually tackle these conditions that really define them and make them unique.

The two scenes are here interpreted by PAPER from an architectural point of view, loosely based on the work of Atelier Bow Wow’s Pet Architecture and Bernard Tschumi’s The Manhattan Transcripts. Below is the first chapter (Notations) from Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau:

In the S bus, in the rush hour. A chap of about 26, felt hat with a cord instead of a ribbon, neck too long, as if someone’s been having a tug-of-war with it. People getting off. The chap in question gets annoyed with one of the men standing next to him. He accuses him of jostling him every time anyone goes past. A snivelling tone which is meant to be aggressive. When he sees a vacant seat he throws himself on to it.

Two hours later, I meet him in the Cour de Rome, in front of the gare Saint-Lazare. He’s with a friend who’s saying: “You ought to get an extra button put on your overcoat.” He shows him where (at the lapels) and why.

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Samuel Michaëlsson is a co-founder and editor of PAPER and is currently studying architectural visualization in Sweden.

The Possibilities and Limitations of an Extreme Environment - An Interview with David Garcia

PAPER: What is the background behind MAP, how did it develop as an idea leading up to its first issue ‘ANTARCTICA’?

David Garcia: The idea of the publication was mainly to try and transfer the discussions, the methodology and the design methods that we had in the studio and move them outside our practice. This was a way for us to get it out for a public discussion, and eventual feedback. So the intention was just to expose our actions. That meant that we wanted to represent what the studio was about and how it worked. The way our practice, MAP Architects (previously David Garcia Studio), works is to collaborate with the scientific community in its widest understanding to inform architecture with the challenges it has today which I think are quite specific, they’re much more complex than what they have been before. Mainly due to our denser cities and spreading communities, we are in touch with natural and artificial challenges which are quite extreme, whether it’s pollution, derelict infrastructure or political frontiers. The idea is to represent how we tackle those problems in a publication which for me had several aims; it should be very affordable, I wanted something that if you were just slightly curious, price would never be an issue. I wanted our questions to spread so that there was a feedback. That meant that magazines and books were out of the questions because of the amount of time it takes to produce but also the expenses involved. Very quickly I saw that the publication could express how we work; first we engage in research, and then we engage in design. It should have an aspect which was very objective, just a collection of data on a particular theme, and one which was subjective, with the language of architecture to engage with questions that came up from the research. That duality asked for a two page format. Facts. Design. Because it was called MAP (Manual of Architectural Possibilities) and it is linked to a map, the two concepts merged together very quickly into a folding map format. That’s how it came to be physically. We use three months of research with contact with experts and scientists. Then we take a pause where we debate questions that have risen from that research, and then we do series of three to four projects that take up those questions from a very pragmatic point of view or a very critical point of view, or even sometimes a cynical point of view.

The research side of MAP 'ANTARCTICA', the first issue of Manual of Architectural Possibilities.

P: So the studio was doing these kind of projects before you established MAP as a publication, was it just an extension of your previous work?

DG: Yes, it is an extension of our methodology. The only difference is that what we did at the studio were competitions or commissions and sometimes research projects. With regards to MAP it is almost solely speculative projects. Although some of those projects, funny enough, have then become real projects. Because there was interest and they have transformed themselves, but that was the only difference, it was a form for research and speculation without a necessary permission, but it has been a strange boomerang where sometimes those speculations have become studies and commissions.

P: The topics of extreme environments and disasters is something that seems to appeal to many, which is also mirrored in popular culture in recent years where films, tv-series and video games have been treating similar subjects as MAP; Contagion, Pandemic, Chernobyl Diaries, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., The Day After Tomorrow are just a few examples. What makes these extreme environments and disasters so interesting, and is it more relevant today than 50 years ago?

DG: I think that all themes rise from present contemporary concerns and sometimes they are very abstract, sometimes they are very concrete, sometimes it is a geography that we are interested in, such as Antarctica. It was an area that would be interesting to know what it was like as a continent and how it would compare in terms of its challenges. Some are a bit more abstract, like ‘ARCHIVE’. The transition that we have had in the past 50 years from analog to digital, what are the implications with regards to information and the built environment? Others are very physical but their apparent expression is much less tangible, which is the idea of ‘QUARANTINE’ for example. Although once we have picked up on a subject we touch on all these different histories and implications, I have to say we have never been influenced by a film or a fashion. I think it is just things that are in every one’s concern, whatever creative, or non creative, realm it is. The ideas of radioactive pollution has obviously had very imminent results from Chernobyl and Fukushima. That becomes part of the general consciousness and with regards to quarantine, I think it has been a constant concern throughout humanity literally. The fear of extinguishing through epidemic. It has also very direct implications today mainly due to the way we are interacting with nature, but also because we are moving and are in touch with the world in an overwhelming scale and speed. So I think that our themes come from general concerns that are also touched upon by many other fields.

P: The studio is, as mentioned, doing collaborations with many different institutions in various scientific fields. The research aspect is touched upon in a university environment, but many times in a problematic and naïve way, treating the research only as a justification for form or programme. How important is research in architecture, both in practice and in the university?

DG: It is naïve to think that you will become an expert at the fields that you are going to be touching, because they are very complex. But at the same time it is vital for any designer to come close and to collaborate with those who are experts in the fields of study that your design touch. Mainly because your design decisions are informed decisions that become much more robust, and I don’t believe in the pure artistic fancy as the only submission for any architectural design. I’m not saying it isn’t vital that there is a spatial quality that goes beyond the functional, I think it is. But I think just as strongly that it is important that building performs beyond the phenomenological. I think it also has to, as an element in the environment, be more than just a passive, static shell. It can be a performative shell, and that performance can be active or passive, meaning that it can engage with its challenges, not because it’s moving around but the way that it is implicitly designed. I do not that think those two aspects need to be put against each other but I think that ethically and for design robustness it is vital to understand as much as you can about the challenges of the context.

P: Is it different though in a university? Should the approach be different compared to practice where you have more resources and possibilities to contact the experts in these various fields?

DG: I think it is actually easier in the university because you have more time and dedication. In practice the resources are very limited, and even though there is an income from projects it is seldom the case that you can convince the client to invest in that type of research. Normally what you create is a parallel platform to the project so that it can be invested via public funding or alternative funds. The resources are again very specific and pigeon holed into what they should go in to. So for us it is a challenge to convince the clients that we should have more time and more resources.

P: What is the process like when it comes to deciding the themes and topics of MAP?

DG: The decision regarding what theme to explore is always on going, there is a constant discussion at the studio about ideas, projects and themes. There is a catalogue of possible themes which we brainstorm, it is an on going process.

P: One thing that we particularly enjoy about MAP as a publication is the way you can read it in so many different ways and different scales, as a poster on the wall as well as a small booklet for example. How important is the graphic layout of MAP, both in terms of readability as well as its visual impact?

DG: I would never call the publication a poster, although it can be used as one. Nonetheless, the graphic detailing is vital for us because we feel we would like to communicate at different levels. One is more immediate, where info-graphics is one very important tool to communicate basic facts through a graphical lens. We are very careful about the way MAP forms a single open page, a double page, a folded element and how you can read it from fold to fold. It has the power of the map as an object, where you can choose segments that you would like to read, and the index is actually expressed as a coordinate system, indicating longitude and latitude. It is also important how one issue of MAP visually connects with another. If you put all the issues that we have done so far next to each other the project pages communicate. There is always a territory that bleeds into the next, the rivers become fields that transform and connect the publications when aligned next to each other. For us it is very important that it is not only about content, but also about form and that they work together as well as possible. It is one aspect that takes a lot of time, we normally design five or six radically different proposals for each MAP, apart from the hundreds of versions during design development. There are many that are thrown out and redone and so on, so there is a lot of work on that level, and if we are not happy with the result, we postpone printing. A printing deadline is not a major factor for us and we would rather postpone it for a month than compromise the standards.

P: How do you approach information and come up with new interesting ways of presenting it?

DG: When we research, the most difficult part is cooking down the data we have gathered. We have to get down to the essentials so that MAP becomes a gate into information but not an encyclopedia. When we find the most relevant aspects we try to combine them so that someone rather quickly can come to terms with what we are dealing with. Once we have selected those parameters it is just a question of experimenting with different ways of communicating that data. There is only a small team working on how to present the data visually.

P: How many people are working on each issue of MAP?

DG: It changes during its production but I would say an average of four to five people. Sometimes there are twelve and sometimes three.

P: You mentioned that the publication is separated into a subjective and an objective side. Is there ever a danger that the research will become design-centered if these aspects are not separated?

DG: We are not allowed to design when we research because we do not know what we are going to be designing. At that stage we just want to know what is ‘Quarantine’, what is ‘Antarctica’, what is ‘Chernobyl’? It is only when we have identified some of the questions, problems and challenges that interest us that we engage with design, and that happens after the research is done. Once the design phase begins there is once again feedback from the experts in the specific field. Some of the projects are extremely pragmatic. Others are much more subtle and are critically aimed at construction methods and social or political aspects, and some of them are in fact satirical and cynical in their approach.

P: What projects have been developed into real life projects?

DG: The Maldives Habitations is a project that has become an ongoing subject of research for the government, which in turn has produced other small projects. The Iceberg Habitation has received focus of attention and has also been tested at different scales. We believe that all of the projects that we create could be realised. We do not think that we are doing any science fiction. Even the most radical ones, such as the Iceberg project. All you need is a caterpillar and then start by making a whole into an iceberg. I feel that all of the projects that we have designed, even if they might appear very strange or unusual, are possible. All you need to do is to engage technologies. The Zoo for contaminated species is the most radical one, but it’s not science fiction, it’s just a big hole in the ground with a dome. Some of these projects are just the most simple solutions to the problems approached, the ‘Ready Made Antarctic Base Station’ for example is a project where you would just land a series of retired air crafts on Antarctica instead of Arizona to create a work station. For us they are just alternative  ways of engaging with the built environment, but I don’t think we make any of our buildings float in the air or stand by wishful thinking. I think what we challenge are other aspects, we challenge ways of design and building that are not necessarily traditional ones.

The Maldives Habitations - a project by MAP Architects that is now materializing.

P: What is the next extreme environment for MAP to investigate?

DG: The next MAP is focusing on Greenland. It is special, because it is the only MAP so far that does not only present projects designed by us. It takes the work that we have done for the Venice Biennale this year where the Danish pavilion selected four architectural teams to tackle different challenges on Greenland. We thought that the research was so thorough that it could easily be a MAP. It is essentially going to be about Greenland and its challenges and at the same time a collection of projects by the different teams. MAP Architects and Henning Larsen Architects formed one team, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) and a Greenlandic studio called Tegnestuen Nuuk formed a second one. Another one consisted of Vandkunsten, Qarsoq Tegnestue and Clement & Carlsen. It was a one year long research process where we visited Greenland twice and collaborated with the local architectural practices.

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Architect David A. Garcia is founder and principal of MAP architects. He is the editor and publisher of the international publication MAP (Manual of Architectural Possibilities). www.maparchitects.dk

He was interviewed by Samuel Michaëlsson and Hugo Losman on the 20th of November in Lund, Sweden. 

Hugo Losman is a third year architecture student at the School of Architecture in Lund, Sweden.

On Public and Private Space

From ‘an Interview with Cedric Price,’ Issue 1, Polytechnic of Central London Architecture Society:

The assumption that hobbling over the cobbles round the backside of a Barbara Hepworth sculpture is going to cause rich, random, social intercourse amongst the populace is foolish. I think a traffic jam in a square in Rome is probably more humane, even if its on the nasty side; at least the emotions are roused.

The University of Westminster used to be called The Polytechnic of Central London and in those days its architecture school occasionally produced a publication, it was called Issue. The first volume of Issue was published in February 1979, its theme was ‘Public Life - Public Place’. Not surprisingly, it is a theme which continues to fuel architectural discourse to this very day. However, what has changed since those days is the rise of the personal computer, or to be more precise of digital technologies more generally, as an active ingredient in the way life is lived in the modern city. Since, as we shall see, the notions of ‘public’ and ‘private’ already were hopelessly inadequate as a means of articulating the organisational patterns of the modern city, the value of using them today seems doubly doubtful. One item featured in Issue 1 was an article by Richard Goodwin, consisting in an interview with Cedric Price. In answer to the question ‘what is public life’ Price offered the following, important, observation:

I do think that public life, as a general term, is difficult to define. I don’t think, necessarily, that the congregation of a crowd has anything to do with public life: you can have very lonely people in a bus queue. The only common factor is that they all want a bus, and there’s a certain amount of unspoken manners being operated, that they make a queue. But it isn't a very public activity. 

Here Price was making the point, there are numerous places in the modern city, necessary to the functioning of the city, that have been designed to support activities that are essentially private and personal. Price gives the example of the bus stop to make his point, but other contributors gave other examples.

In an article by Stuart Knight the problem of the use of the terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ is confronted head-on: 

Problems seem to emerge when definitions of activities related to public and private life are articulated. Problematic because what are now seen as attributable to public life are in fact aspects of private life. Consumer goods, and the variety of buildings housing them, are related to the necessities of life and, therefore, part of the private domain, as are the consumption of food and drink, the purchase of clothing etc. Indeed, the buildings which house these ‘activities‘ display the ‘intimate’ qualities of domestic life, boutiques are redolent of dressing rooms, restaurants of family dining rooms, and department stores construct domestic interiors in anonymous volumes. ‘Advanced factories’ are designed with ‘T’ groups in mind in order that workers can ‘relate’ to small production groups - modelled on the family - working at their own pace, in ‘personalised’ zones. Similarly, London Board schools of the 19th Century - one of the many ‘public’ monuments of the Victorian suburbs - are demolished to make way for schools arranged and articulated as a series of home based units, complete with pitched roofs and domestic interiors. A domestic ‘image’ which has been destroyed in order to build ‘rationalised’ ‘social housing’ at whose base the school hovers as a bathetic irony. The categories have become reversed the ‘private’ housing has become ‘public’ and the school has become private. Just as the hospital, associated with sickness - a private concern - and from the 15th Century located in a domestic building, even in the 19th Century the cottage hospital was the rule, is now located in a public building complete with airport lounge foyer and attendant ennui, escalators and shops. A third category has interceded here - the social...

The ‘social realm’ gathers together all those characteristics of the ‘private realm’ which are capable of rationalisation - a continuous and ever expanding project - into a society of collective, and assumed, unified interests. The model utilised is that of the family, the purveyor of norms and standards, and is projected as the paradigm for all organisations from the school and commerce to local, national and international institutions and governments. This begins with monarchical rule which posits the ‘royal household’ as the principle and ultimate family of the state who sanction - in the constitutional variety - the apparatus of government; and culminates in the modern bureaucratic state in which no one rules but many manage. In Sweden for example, one third of the working population manages the remaining two thirds, who engage in productive work (About the same proportion as the Polytechnic of Central London). In the democratic state no theoretical debate takes place in public or private since there is no theory only the pragmatic elucidation of norms, standards, procedures and conventions applied mainly to the issues that are the preserve of the private realm...

Instead of ‘private’ and ‘public’, Knight was suggesting the concepts of ‘social’ and ‘intimate’ as more appropriate if we want to theorise the kinds of places and their functioning that arise in the modern city: 

The rise of the ‘intimate’ takes its place in opposition to the rise of the ‘social’, particularly in the last hundred years, where ‘modern individualism’ asserts itself as an incapacity to be at ‘home’ with the conventions and conformism of society or the nihilism implied in existing outside it....This unhappy dialectic accounts for the rise of poetry, music, certain forms of ‘modernist’ art, and that uniquely social form of writing - the novel; and the subsequent decline of the most public of arts - architecture, dependent as it is on characteristics derived from the public, rather than private domains.

Fortunately for architecture, the unhappy dialectic, to which Knight refers here, is based upon a misunderstanding, on the ideal of a perfect state of being, in which human life elegantly unfolds into activities and places that are uniquely and absolutely ‘private’ and ‘public’. However, just because it is based on a misunderstanding, does not mean that architecture is immune from it; the ideal of public & private is a problem for architecture and needs to be addressed, in theory, before it can become effective in practice. Unfortunately - and this is where Knight is correct to draw attention to the domain of the ‘social’ as a specifically modern phenomenon - since theory is not an issue for ‘social’ space, so has it tended to disappear from architectural education. But, without theory, architecture has no place in which to work away at its concepts, testing their validity and asking if they are true or false. The lack of theory in architecture schools makes architecture vulnerable, leaving it incapable of accounting for its productive value, either in the past, the present or the future.

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Doctor Watson teaches Architecture at the University of Westminster and she is the inventor of Air Grid, a colourful but mute lattice structure that has recently evolved into an animated population of flying computers, known as beetles. The record of the change is the subject of her new book: UTOPIAN ADVENTURE: The Corviale Void.

LIMITATIONS - a panel discussion on architectural zines

Make sure not to miss this event with fantastic guests! 

We will also be launching the ninth issue of PAPER concerning the same theme (LIMITATIONS).

Hope to see you all there:

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London Architecture Diary

Between: Dreams

Post WWII Amsterdam

Imagine a city ravaged by war. Imagine the citizens and their memories, their relief, their hope. The city structure has been ripped apart. Something new has to come, but let us pause at this moment for a while. 

The grid has turned into shambles that create space charged with nothingness, ripped memories, but also potential. The structures still standing were lucky to live through the war, or maybe they have to live on with terrible memories. Either way they will be treated as heroes and will serve as reminders of how the people made it through. The people and the heroes have something powerful in common, together they form a powerful Collective. 

The destroyed city is the collective space. The possibilities and dreams are limitless in number and extent. Until the Strong Individuals launch new plans, sing the songs of their future and take the air out of the Collective’s chants. New monuments of men will be built, no doubt handsome, functional and necessary. But they will be selfish. The architecture is selfish and always will be selfish.  

This is the given climate and it is why it is necessary for the architects to define their roles, to keep their morale and legitimacy.

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Hugo Losman is a third year architecture student at the School of Architecture in Lund, Sweden. 

Water Towers of Ireland, an interview with Jamie Young

Jamie Young is an architecture graduate who attended University College Dublin. Since graduating Jamie has been involved  in various projects working with Dublin City Council. These include a research document on Mountjoy Square for Dublin City Council and a research project on alternative uses for overlooked sites in Dublin’s city centre as part of the group PRACTICE. This work culminated in an exhibition, “space|overlooked”, in Dublin Civic Trust which will run until the end of the month (February 2012). He is currently the coordinator of Waterford Pop-up, Waterford City Council’s new city centre rejuvenation scheme. 

Water Towers of Ireland began its life as an eagerness to engage people with these artifacts which pepper the Irish countryside. Being from Ireland myself when driving through the countryside, I notice these lonely objects which are always distant. They appear to be forever on the horizon which is tantalizing. Some might call them an eyesore on the landscape but I think Jamie’s project has succeeded in bringing these towers to life. His project is reminiscent of the work of the Bechers who documented and are continuing to document industrial structures including water towers. Their work has more of a scientific character, a catalogue of structures before they are dismantled and lost. In comparison Jamie’s project which now includes maps, drawings, polaroids and prints, give each water tower an individual quality. The portraits personalize the towers and invite us to look at them up close. Jamie exhibited his water tower portraits at UCD and a piece is currently exhibited at the MadArt gallery in Dublin. He describes the project as “part inventory, part photographic essay and part history”. The project has gained exposure through notable online publications including BLDG BLOG, Archdaily and Architizer.

Nine water towers documented by Jamie Young

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Fearghal Moran: What drove you to document water towers, and what is it you found interesting in these monolithic structures?

Jamie Young: The role of water towers in society has always fascinated me. Far from being objects of a singular function, they have found ways to be useful beyond their intended use. Through their prominence on the landscape, they force their way into the lives of locals. When I was growing up, the closest water tower to where I lived became a weekend hangout and drinking spot. Now, the same tower stands in disuse, covered in antennae for a mobile phone company. It is their visibility though, through  always being built on high ground, that gives them their most interesting use as landmarks. While this seems obvious, it didn’t fully strike me until I was researching and trying to compile a list of those still standing. One of the ways I located towers was through them popping up in Google searches in property website listings – “continue along that road until you see the water tower.” “straight on through the woodlands and pass the water tower.” “turn left at the water tower for Fennells Bay” This interest, along with a want to find some focus in my photography and the necessary completist personality to track down and photograph 200 of anything, led me to secure some funding and hit the road. 

FM: Your images go far beyond just documenting these towers, they are presented like portraits each with their own unique character. Was this your aim when you first started and how have people reacted to the portraits?

JY: The first tower I photographed was at Castlemoyle, New Ross. Through this visit and the time I spent editing the images, I began to get an idea of how I needed to exhibit the work. On entering New Ross from the south, the tower is visible above the town. The closer you get to it, however, the harder it becomes to pinpoint as it disappears behind rows of houses. Though in this case the water tower is situated in the middle of a housing estate, it is true that in most instances the majority of people only interact with these objects from a distance. This realisation, together with how the images show up the texture, structure and weathering of the concrete in detail, made me realise that I needed to print the images as large as possible. For the exhibition this turned out to be 24 x 16, which made for a nice poster feel and worked well in that particular space. People were allowed to get close to these large prints and, in effect, get face to face with something they so often would only view on the horizon. 

Stepping away from the hard documentary style of the Bechers, synonymous with water towers, I try to give these images an emotive value and sense of place. I approach the work as portraiture and hope to convey the subject’s personality, as any good portrait would. The response to this has been one of recognition. People tend to look for the tower where they grew up in amongst my photos and leave more aware of passing them on their travels. The most extreme example of this is the set of photos I have received over the past year from a friend in Singapore. Since seeing the project online, he has been photographing any water towers he comes across and emailing me the results.

 Concrete Cooling Towers by Bernd and Hilla Becher

FM: Most of the structures that you have documented are uninhabitable. Could your project be a way to make them more alive and not just landmarks?

JY: It was later in the project when I first started giving this some thought. After Geoff Manaugh’s post about the project on BLDGBLG, other articles started showing up on various sites. Archdaily asked the question, “If no longer in use, what can be done to take advantage of these stand alone structures?”.  While I like the idea of these brutalist structures being left to ruin, it seems like a wasted opportunity given their varied and interesting forms. Though this project will never be about re-purposing the structures, I have given the issue some thought.What the original design offers in each case is height. Giving access to this height offers a view. Offering any view in Ireland immediately brings tourism to mind. These are the kind of points that have come up time and again in any conversations I have had with people about how to make use of disused water towers. I have tentative plans to run a design competition for students later in the year to look at this exact problem. 

FM: Can you see any patterns in the form of the towers? Are they regionally different and are they shaped by function?

JY: The primary patterns in their form are based on technology. While stripped to their basic function the towers are extremely simplistic – made of two parts, a container and a structure to raise this up – how this is achieved has changed over the years. The earliest substantial towers were made of metal tanks raised up on legs or placed on top of an existing masonry structure. These were most commonly seen at train stations across the country, feeding the steam trains of the day. A large number of these can still be seen, with a few still occasionally in use. Early concrete towers were small, had square tanks and between eight and twelve legs. Over time, and with the development of the material, tanks became round, the number of supports grew fewer and the towers became larger. This brought us from the eight-legged tower at Killeagh, Co. Cork (built as apart of an intended Royal Army Airship Station in 1918) to the now infamous, single chuted Sillogue tower of North Dublin. Regionally, the early towers would have differed due to the local ironworks that manufactured them. Nowadays, while there are similar towers, this is down to the same engineering company being used and can happen anywhere n the country. The most distinctive example of this is the tower at Kildalton College, Co Kilkenny and its sister tower at Gaybrook, just outside Mullingar. Both were built by MC O’Sullivan Engineers.  

FM: I was intrigued by how Geoff Manaugh described the water towers as “prisons for water”, is this how you would describe them? And if not what immediately springs to mind?

JY: As part of my first year studying architecture, the class went on a trip to Inis Meain, an island off the coast of Galway. On the west end of the island is an impressive cliff face, on top of which are huge slabs of stone. From here, looking back towards the fields, you can see what at first look like quite inactive sheep. They are in fact small boulders of a yellow stone carried there by glaciers and dropped as they melted. These non-indigenous rocks are known as erratics. When beginning my work on water towers, this memory came back to me again and again. I began to associate the conspicuous nature and otherness of these stones with the towers I now saw everywhere I went. In my writing on the subject you will come across the phrase “erratics of our everyday landscape” repeatedly. This has always summed them up for me. 

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Water Towers of Ireland is ongoing and currently seeking funding. The ultimate goal of the project is to document each of the towers still standing and gather this information into one publication. For further details on the project you can visit:

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Fearghal Moran is a third year architecture student at the University of Westminster.