INTERMEDIATE 7 2012 / 2013

MOSCOW NIGHTS: SPECTACULAR CONDENSERS

Summary:

The unit explores design ‘infrastructures’ that act as transfers between urban systems while aligning

programme and form. Playing on collisions between commerce and culture, we will tap into the whirlpools

of leisure and entertainment behind flagrant Moscow transformations to define hybrid typologies. Following

research into paradoxical local conditions and global case-studies, we will exaggerate scenarios of

densification and intensification. Focusing on performance, we tackle the urban club as the ultimate ‘social

condenser’ – a mixer and an accelerator for a 24-hour city.

Through pragmatic diagnostics, opportunistic sampling and progressive transplants, we will inject Moscow

landmark hosts with vital elements. New hybrids will be resolved as synthetic ‘infrastructures’ -

diagrammatic frameworks and spatial structures. Translating diagrams into forms, we will move from

element prototypes and composite models to ‘decorated’ programmes and theatrical atmospheres. Both

functional and fantastic, our design ‘provocations’ will respond to critical utopias by visionaries from

Ginzburg and Chernikhov, to Price and Archizoom, to Koolhaas and Tschumi. Final ‘work/fun palaces’,

‘plug-in theatres’, and ‘no-stop function-mixers’ will manage volatile spaces and events for maximum visual

impact. For multiplied effects, unit outputs will mediate between city and architecture, analysis and

projection, operation and appearance.

TERM 1:

Week 2 – 3:

Exercise 1: APPEARANCE / OPERATION

Performance Devices and Augmented Elements

Our first analysis and synthesis exercise will explore a range of conceptual and graphic approaches to key

‘elements’ – extracted basic design components that can be varied formally and loaded with programmatic

potential. Working in small teams, you will sample and dissect a range of London’s entertainment sites from

theatres and opera houses to night-clubs. Through back-stage tours, private visits, site documentation and

research, key performance devices (screens, wings, runways, lifts, etc.) will help alter larger architectural

elements (mobile stage-sets, multi-functional seating, circulation fly-towers, curtain-walls, etc.)

We will juxtapose several drawing techniques in order to augment the elements in terms of how they work

(operation) and how they look (appearance). “Families” of elements will be revised in terms of

choreography vs. scenography, using variable body positions, movement trajectories and programmatic

boundaries as well as controlled views, formal mutations and material changes.

Events: Backstage tours Lectures / Seminars: Modes of Drawing Workshops: Architectural Element; Translations

from Drawing

Output: ‘catalogue’ of performance elements; devices ‘operations manual’ - drawings, models; augmented element

hybrid drawing.

Week 4 – 5:

Exercise 2: ELEMENT / INFRASTRUCTURE

Element Transfers, Layered Systems and Exploded Typologies

The second exercise will rely on a set of augmented elements to transform an alternative London cultural or

commercial site at the level of the system. Parasitic elements will accelerate mutations starting with leisure

and entertainment components of museums, libraries, malls, business centres, etc. Layers and intersections

of several systems (program, circulation, division, enclosure, service, etc.) will help define the host’s

‘infrastructure’.

The key concept within the unit, ‘infrastructure’ will be understood as both an organizational and a spatial

framework that allows for a methodical and systematic design intervention. Adjusted site systems will

suggest cross-pollinated typologies that can register formal explosions, bifurcations, and mergers in order to

support diverse programmatic activities. We will practice working in-between two key scales - ‘element’ and

‘infrastructure’ - combining composite maps, diagrams and visual scenarios into hybrid constructions. With

case-studies as additional catalysts, we will increase the complexity and intensity of the ‘surrogate’ site and

derive portable diagrammatic devices and ‘machines’ for Moscow settings.

Lectures / Seminars: Infrastructures of Organization; Mapping: Graphic Typologies and Analytical Categories

Workshops: Mapping and Diagramming

Key outputs: case-study analyses; typological diagrams; composite maps of site systems; hybrid map-drawings of

infrastructure + element; visual essays / scenarios / cartoons.

Week 5: Process Jury

HTS / Unit Research Proposals

Week 6: Open Week

Workshop: Projective Representation (tbc)

Week 7-11

‘MOSCOW NIGHTS’: PRAGMATIC RESEARCH AND DIAGNOSTICS

Urban Paradoxes, Pragmatic Diagnostics and Moscow Catalogue

Through extensive research and indulgent fieldwork, we will tap into the whirlpools of leisure and

entertainment behind Moscow’s notorious image to seek new hybrid logics, diagrams and typologies. The

city’s ingeniously extravagant nightlife will inspire unconventional hotspots: bacchanalian balls and lavish

parties flare up behind solemn facades, exclusive shows skip sumptuous venues for dilapidated outposts, and

clandestine havens proliferate beside decadent hotels. Learning from the paradoxical coexistence of static

and dynamic, contained and distributed, exposed and concealed, we will distil ‘loose’ design principles and

opportunistic urban strategies. We will pay attention to variations on the urban ‘club’ (vis-à-vis Workers

Club, Palace of Culture, leisure village and nightclub) as a new catalytic device.

We will use two key methods: ‘diagrammatic diagnostics’ (to extract key relationships, logics and

structures) and ‘graphic condensation’ (to collect visual patterns, formal vocabularies and material samples).

Experimenting with formats of pragmatic research and speculative design, you will compile individual

chapters as parts of our collective publication - Moscow Catalogue – packed with graphic posters, photo-

diaries, collated maps, diagrammatic tables, narratives, manifestoes, design formulas, etc. Short written parts

of the Catalogue chapters will be linked to HTS work.

Lectures / Seminar: Research to Design - Visual Methods and Precedents; Sampling The Image of the City Workshops: Diagrammatic Diagnostics; Graphic Condensation / Cataloguing.

Output: ‘Moscow Catalogue’ chapter draft

Week 9-11

DESIGN PROVOCATIONS: CONDENSER CLUBS

Driven by Moscow diagnostics and London transfers, we will exaggerate scenarios of urban densification

and intensification using architectural catalysts. You will choose to target a prominent Moscow landmark,

representing a key cultural or commercial typology (from Pushkin Museum and Lenin Library to Moskva

Hotel and Kursky Station, etc.). As you attack sterile hosts, juxtapositions of business centres and stage-sets,

stations and studios, museums and runways will prompt new hybrids. Focusing on performance, we will

consider urban ‘club’ as the ultimate ‘social condenser’ – a mixer and an accelerator for a 24-hour city.

You will extrapolate the effect of your design ideas at the levels of the building and the city. Both functional

and fantastic, our extreme conceptual and graphic ‘provocations’ will respond to critical utopias by visionary

architects from Ginzburg and Chernikhov, to Archizoom and Superstudio, to Koolhaas and Tschumi.

Liberated by the dreamy symbolism and theatrics of Soviet “paper architects” of 1960s-1980s (including

Brodsky, Utkin, Belov, etc.) as well as Russian extremes of scale, expense, and exhibitionism, we will aim

for bold impact without constraints of viability. The provocation set will include: text, diagram, drawing and

image.

Lectures / Seminar: Diagrams, Utopias and Provocations; Hybrids and Social Condensers

Workshops: Express Provocation 1.

Output: Design provocation 1 (text, diagram, image / poster, drawing);

Week 12 (Specific Dates to be Confirmed)

Moscow Unit Trip

Urban Lab: Mapping the City; Derive Exercises; Diagram Diaries; Case-Study Catalogue; Transient ‘Elements’

Catalogue.

Visits to leading architecture offices and planning agencies; meetings with urban design and preservation experts;

fieldwork in bars, nightclubs, concert halls, cultural centres, etc.

TERM 2: Week 1: Term Jury

‘Moscow Catalogue’ Chapter and Design Provocation 2; Site / Design Intervention Proposal; Customized Condenser

Club Brief.

Week 2 - 4:

Intervention 1: SYNTHETIC INFRASTRUCTURES Synthetic Infrastructures, Compressed Megastructures and Composite Prototypes

To manage diverse aggregates of our growing condensers, we will experiment with synthetic design

infrastructures. We will understand ‘infrastructure’ as a diagrammatic design system that links

organizational frameworks with spatial scaffolds. These systems will shift between ‘interfaces’ and thick

surfaces, ‘fields’ and layered grids, ‘ecologies’ and compressed megastructures.

The surreptitious return of the megastructure in recent practice will be of key interest, as we consider

combining permanent and temporary components; lighter programming and fields for play; and expansion of

urban layers and systems. We will link two generations of case-study projects to add megastructural logic to

our condensers: Situationists, Smithsons, Price, Archizoom, Superstudio, Archigram vs. Koolhaas / OMA,

Tschumi, Holl, MVRDV.

We will also begin to convert your ‘design infrastructures’ from abstract diagrams and schematic proposals

to detailed composites - layering systems in axo-maps, and hybrid drawings; inhabiting a dense site model

with a set of material element prototypes, and building up programme in diagrammatic maps and scenario

sections.

Seminar / Workshop: Design Infrastructures / Frameworks and Ecologies; Workshop: Elements: Modelling and

Prototyping

Output: design infrastructure (diagrammatic templates, layered axo-maps, scenario sections); site elements: study

models, element prototypes; site infrastructure: composite model.

Week 4: Combined Tutorials

Week 5: Open Week

Workshop: Advanced Digital Modelling (tbc)

Week 6: Mid-Term / Process Jury

Week 7-11:

Intervention 2: DECORATED DIAGRAMS Program | Form Mis-fit: Built Diagrams, Camouflaged Programme and Performative Surfaces

At this state, we will be free to refine key architectural segments in terms of programme and form

independently. In line with the unit’s logic of the ‘decorated diagram’, we will loosen up the rigid ties

between programmatic content and formal expression. On one hand, the re-programming of hubs will call

for intense functional pollution and turnover, which flirt with approaches from functionalist management

and bubble diagramming to cross-programming and datascapes. Revised in response to non-place uses,

capillary flows, and parasitic cycles, your program structure will form the basis of formal translations, as we

literally build and concretize diagrams in drawings and models. On the other hand, we will fertilize the

project with exterior shapes, decorative patterns, and mis-communicative graphics. We will become

obsessed with liberated surfaces, playing with the formal and material envelopes to suggest new uses and

mis-uses.

Juxtaposed case-studies from several contemporary practices – such as OMA, MVRDV, Herzog & de

Meuron, Diller Scofidio + Renfro – will reveal our preference for programmatic structures in “costumes” and the

plastic treatment of section. We play with juxtapositions of programmable voids and saturated surfaces;

functional pods and occupiable envelopes; staged circulation and malleable enclosures. Condensers will

combine the benefits of interstitial spaces, frictions, and detours as well as camouflage, projection, mis-

reading and screening.

Output: Condenser Program (diagrams / drawings); Built Diagrams (program physical models); form / surface

prototypes, combined program / form prototypes;

Base set of projection drawings (diagrams and key drawings: plans, sections, elevations); research plates / design

manual.

Week 11: Term Jury

TERM 3: Week 1: TS Option 2: Final Document Hand-in

Week 1-7:

Intervention 3: MULTIPLIED EFFECTS

Spectacular Condensers: Image and Organization

In term 3, we will refine our condensers in terms of efficiency and effect. Once again, we will balance

‘operation’ and ‘appearance’ via two simultaneous pursuits - organization and image. As we clarify the

organization of diverse programmatic components and spatial segments in systemic models and drawings;

we will amplify the visual impact of our beacons, magnets and stage-sets via enhanced images. Interplay

between the external image (graphic shapes, decorative patterns, and media projections) and internal image

(intricate surfaces, material mixtures, and immersive atmospheres) will remain key. Following our scenarios,

we will also begin to animate our images using programmatic scenarios and motion graphics.

Rational evaluations of condensing machines will not interfere with irrational pursuits of seductive objects

and environments. Our beautiful apparatuses and imageable condensers will not compromise social and

spatial effects. To emphasize multiple results, two-tier project documentation will include: transcripts and

posters, composite maps and visual scenarios, diagrammatic matrices and intricate images.

Lectures / Seminars: Architecture of the Image; “Infrastructural Formalism”. Workshops: Enhanced Image; Motion

Graphics; Portfolio Design.

Output: two-tier project documentation (augmented images, renderings, simulations, provocations + synthetic drawings,

program diagrams, scenarios, phasing plans); final ‘organization’ model; final juxtaposed image plates;

customized set of portfolio ‘anchor’ drawings (in consultation with tutors): to include revised projection sets of plans,

sections, elevations; site infrastructure and elements composite and axo-maps; visual scenarios; etc.

Week 5: Jury Week

Week 7: 2nd Year End of Year Reviews

Week 7: 3rd Year Final Check

Week 9: Intermediate Examinations

PRODUCTS AND OUTCOMES:

Our conceptually ambitious and graphically dense compendia will reveal the interplay of ideas, experiments,

influences, accidents and post-rationalizations. Theoretical and practical products will come together in

extensive research ‘catalogues’, design manuals and detail plates. Final portfolios will archive: conceptual

statements, customized brief and manifestoes; design | research chapters of the Moscow Catalogue;

provocations / posters; London surrogate clubs maps and hybrid drawings; performance elements drawings

and material prototypes; diagrammatic maps and composite models of infrastructural site systems; built and

decorated program diagrams vs. formal prototypes; surface and pattern studies and mock-ups; revised

organization drawings and models; augmented image sets, etc. Combined unit outcomes will link city and

architecture, analysis and projection, operation and appearance.

By being a part of this unit, you will learn how to:

- channel research into design, responding to context and precedents via polemical projects;

- reconnect theory and practice, generating new concepts and theories while producing viable design

solutions and refined prototypes.

- work on abstract and concrete levels, using visual and conceptual tools to convert ideas into tangible

deliverables;

- think in terms of diagrammatic and infrastructural systems and control how the project’s is saturated with

multiple constituents;

- design at the level of program vs. form and experiment with their mutual influences;

- use advanced design methods and technique to connect scales and stages of the project: from urban site to

building, from organization to space, from diagram to form, etc.

- produce refined graphic products – from research catalogue publications to project manuals to individual

plates.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Stan Allen, Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation (London: Routledge, 2009; or orig. Amsterdam: G+B

Arts International, 2000)

a+t Research Group, This is Hybrid: An Analysis of Mixed-use Buildings by a+t (Vitoria-Gasteiz: a+t Architecture

Publishers, 2011)

Reyner Banham, Megastructures: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1976)

Andrea Branzi, No-Stop City: Archizoom Associati (Orleans: HYX, 2006)

Daidalos 74, 2000 (“Diagrammania”)

Cynthia C. Davidson, ed., Anything (New York: Anyone Corporation, 2001)

Mark Garcia, ed. The Diagrams of Architecture (Chichester: Wiley, 2010)

Roberto Gargiani, Rem Koolhaas | OMA: The Construction of Merveilles (Lausanne: EPFL Press / Oxford: Routledge,

2008)

Michael Hensel, Christopher Hight, Archim Menges, eds., Space Reader: Heterogeneous Space in Architecture

(Chichester: Wiley, 2009)

Steven Holl, Pamphlet Architecture 11-20 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011) (Esp. No. 11: “Hybrids”)

S. O. Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture: The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s

(London: Thames and Hudson, 1987)

Heinrich Klotz, ed., Paper Architecture: New Projects from the Soviet Union (New York: Rizzoli, 1990)

Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (New York: Monacelli Press, 1994. orig.

1978)

Sylvia Lavin, Kissing Architecture (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011)

MVRDV, Farmax: Excursions on Density (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2006)

Lois Nesbitt, Brodsky and Utkin: The Complete Works (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003)

Praxis 8, 2006, “Re: Programming”

Praxis 9, 2006, “Expanding Surface” (Theme Issue)

Project Russia No. 31 (2004) (“Night Life: New Russian Clubs”)

Andreas & Ilka Ruby, Images: A Picture Book of Architecture (Munich, New York: Prestel, 2004)

Simon Sadler, Archigram: Architecture with Architecture (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005)

Hashim Sarkis, Pablo Allard and Timothy Hyde, eds., CASE: Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital and the Matt Building

Revival (Munich; New York, NY: Prestel, 2001)

Harriet Schoenholz Bee, ed., The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard

Gilman Collection (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002)

Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992)

Bernard Tschumi, Event-Cities: Praxis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994)

Martin Van Schaik, Otakar Máčel, Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations, 1956-76 (Prestel Publishing, 2004)

Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972, rpt.

1977)

UNIT MASTERS AND CONSULTANTS:

Unit Masters:

Maria Fedorchenko studied at UCLA, Princeton University and MARKHI. Having practised in Russia,

Greece, and the US (including Michael Graves & Associates), she co-directs Fedorchenko Studio and runs

an urban consultancy. Focusing on diagrammatic tools and polyvalent design systems, her research and

design was published and exhibited internationally. Teaching at UC Berkeley, UCLA and CCA since 2003,

she has been involved in HTS, Housing & Urbanism and the Visiting School at the AA.

Tatiana von Preussen was educated at Cambridge University and Columbia University. She has practised

in London and New York where she worked for James Corner Field Operations. She has taught design

studio and advanced representation at Columbia University. Previously a partner of the research group

Gleamlab, she is a director of vPPR Architects.

Consultants (full list tbc): João Bravo da Costa (Foster + Partners);

Monia de Marchi (AA);

Francesca Hughes (AA);

Dirk Lellau (CHORA / University of Westminster);

Oliviu Lugojan-Ghenciu;

Melodie Leung (Zaha Hadid);

Jessica Reynolds (vPPR);

Damian Rogan (Buro Happold);

Ingrid Shroeder (AA / Cambridge University);

Antoine Vaxelaire (AA);

Thomas Weaver (AA).

APPENDIX:

Intermediate 7 2012 / 2013

TECHNICAL STUDIES STATEMENT:

Condenser Systems and Elements

Inter 7 will integrate Technical Studies into the design process by focusing on structural and material

‘systems’ and ‘elements’ and their influence on form and program. Expanding the notion of design

‘infrastructure’ – diagrammatic framework and spatial scaffold - we will interrelate conceptual and structural

systems. We will probe ‘structure’ on organizational, generative and performative levels, moving beyond

utilitarian support and assembly solutions.

Experimenting with open-ended spatial frameworks, we will move from issues of resistance, stability, and

enclosure to those of operation, growth and change. We will be alert to opportunity costs, considering how a

particular system affects subdivision, compression and re-programming or how a material solution limits

options for transformation, staging, and exposure. Through case-study research, diagrammatic analysis and

synthesis, physical prototypes and detail drawings, we will revise structural systems in response to multiple

aspects of the project from urban context to visual effect. Key TS components will develop in line with

design phases in Terms 1 and 2, with final submission in the first week of Term 3 (Late TS Option 2).

First, we will tap into urban and disciplinary contexts, augmenting Moscow building sites. For those dealing

with “adaptive re-use”, you will clash inherited and colonizing systems while weighing parasitic, additive

and composite options. Following studies of existing structures, we will play with removals, substitutions

and attachments. Research into local and global case-studies will support TS precedent analyses.

Second, TS will emphasize specific architectural ‘elements’ – ranging from interior pods and temporary

props to circulation cores and thick envelopes. As material treatment will be crucial to performance, we will

also push the micro-scale of the element by exploring its tactile and visual characteristics beside key

components. Integrating dissimilar elements into synthetic ‘infrastructures’, we will focus on a local

mediating sub-system using a key transition point or an active zone. For example, considering how to carry

out an underground expansion, to envelope or span in-between disparate buildings on site, or to isolate an

autonomous interior volume will help define specific technical problems and solutions.

Further, considering mis-fit between form and program in Term 2, we will develop further variations on

initial structural / formal systems in view of programmatic performance. We will translate program diagrams

into built structures, while testing spatial systems for event support. Some past examples of structural

proposals include:

- circumscribing extra-large interior voids for fluid spaces and events within homogeneous stratified

structures for everyday uses;

- integrating surface and structure to multiply spatial layers while channelling flows and distributing

splintered functions;

- accelerating kit-of-parts assemblies and on-site adjustments to assist with necessary typological

variations of individual units within extendable urban megastructures;

- defining variable systems of scaffolds and space-frames to support deconstruction and

reconstruction of spatial fragments as well as temporary program; etc.

With possibilities to address a wide range of problems from interior detail to urban infrastructure, from

specific element prototypes to general systemic diagrams, the TS project will support the holistic

development of the design project.