Register - Architecture & Landscape

In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews the architect and educator Tony Fretton. Since establishing his practice in 1982, and by example and instruction Tony has persistently made the case for the value of quiet and thoughtful architecture.

This thinking was made powerfully manifest in his ambiguous masterpiece - the Lisson Gallery - makes a reading of its London context which is at once lyrical and scholarly, and does so in a manner respectful of its programme as a small gallery, and its civic responsibilities. When this project was completed it provided an exemplar for architects across Europe who were seeking a means to engage with history and context without recourse to pastiche and on the terms of contemporary tectonics. Its value remains today and we talk about this project at length in this interview. A wonderful companion to get to this project is the sketchbooks published by Drawing Matter, and available to download here https://www.drawingmatter.org/publications/fretton-lisson-gallery/

Tony continues to teach, and he reflects on the particular challenges facing young practitioners and students. He sets these against where he now finds himself, and the potential for continued discovery and reinvention in late practice - a rich tradition in the history of architecture.

This was an impromptu interview in Tony's office - apologies about the ambient sounds from the local school, which while joyful might make certain parts of the interview difficult to follow!

Credits:

Register is brought to you by the Department of Architecture & Landscape at Kingston University.

fada.kingston.ac.uk/al/

Head of Department: Eleanor Suess

Register Editor: Timothy Smith

Interviewer: Andrew Clancy

Audio: Justin Howard

In this episode we are joined by the sculptor Maud Cotter. Maud's work, frequently exquisitely made from every day materials explores space, and the relational potential of space beyond the closed question of resolution. Her ability to articulate 'open questions' in her work and work process makes her an inspirational critic and speaker, who gets to the heart of what is involved in producing a sustainable creative practice in art or architecture. Writing of her work to date she says

"We exist in a network of relations, one that allows formation in pattern in order to engage with its force. In this field of play, in which things carom, my practice lies. Sculpture as an action is critical to our understanding of this mercurial game of randomness and order. I understand the human condition as being, not just tentative by virtue of our vulnerability, but one that is necessarily so, in order to retain our closeness of connection with a changing world.

We exist in a network of relations, one that allows formation in pattern in order to engage with its force. In this field of play, in which things carom, my practice lies. Sculpture as an action is critical to our understanding of this mercurial game of randomness and order. I understand the human condition as being, not just tentative by virtue of our vulnerability, but one that is necessarily so, in order to retain our closeness of connection with a changing world.

Moments in which one thing resonates with another are special. This gather, or coupling, of elements is at its most profound when a feeling of the found is retained in the final mix ; when aesthetic boundaries are not forced. Corporate culture limits our relationship with matter into measurable units, offering us only an impoverished understanding, a limited relationship, deactivated matter, captured and dead. Within the intangible lies the aesthetic glue that allows units of matter to reach a transcendent whole. Recognition and activation of the void provides a deep level of integration of idea and matter. Making in this arena of presence and absence, within the full context of the work, offers continuity, live engagement - a propagation of form and idea. Achieving this level of live engagement within the work is my primary goal. I seeks to assert such spatial sequences, movements in time, as the viewer moves around the work in a commitment of seeing, allowing the piece to reach completion in their perception of it. The strength of the work lies in its ability to hold intangible moments, to capture a part of the void, like a ghost within the work."

http://maudcotter.com

Credits:

Register is brought to you by the Department of Architecture & Landscape at Kingston University.

fada.kingston.ac.uk/al/

Head of Department: Eleanor Suess

Register Editor: Timothy Smith

Interviewer: Andrew Clancy

Audio: Justin Howard

In this episode we are joined by Donald Matheson and Jason Whiteley. They set up their practice in London in 2012, after some years working for Tony Fretton and Herzog & deMeuron.

Theirs is an architecture of minimal means. They have a careful eye for latent possibilities in the fabric where they work, and many of their projects find their language in these observations. They build on these with typological references and an unsentimental engagement with the realities of contemporary construction. Refreshingly they welcome budget negotiations as a means to engage with reality. In this there is no reduction of ambition, but rather a refinement of how it is manifest.

There is a delightful directness from the work that results with the plans in particular worked to a high level of refinement. Underlying this there is an incipient figuration - with structural elements or the facade arranged not in the search of being fully background, but rather to possess an unpretentious presence.

Our conversation covered a lot of ground, most particularly teaching, and the value of teaching to both student and tutor.

http://www.mathesonwhiteley.com

Credits:

Register is brought to you by the Department of Architecture & Landscape at Kingston University.

fada.kingston.ac.uk/al/

Head of Department: Eleanor Suess

Register Editor: Timothy Smith

Interviewer: Andrew Clancy

Audio: Justin Howard

In this episode we are joined by Hans Kollhoff, who we invited to Kingston to do a workshop with unit 6 of our M.Arch, and to give a register lecture. Prof Kollhoff teaches in the ETH, and practices from Berlin in partnership with Helga Timmermann.

Kollhoffs life work might be described as a quest for meaning and language in contemporary archtiecture. Writing of the Piraeus building in 1995 he said “Un­der the eco­nom­ic pres­sure to cre­ate some­thing op­ti­mal in ev­ery re­spect, ev­ery­ building turns out to be noth­ing but an unin­spired shoe­box which the architect then dec­o­rates as they think best. To­day's build­ing pro­grammes de­fy for­mal analo­gies so that, if they doesn't want to mar­ket themselves as a win­dow- dress­er, the ar­chi­tect is forced to fer­ret around and find ves­tiges of for­mal in­ten­si­ty in even the most ba­nal build­ing pro­grammes and pro­jects”

This search has taken him through an exploration of different ways this might be found. His early works seek this in the harnessing of the contingencies of regulations and site, while more recent projects embrace Chicago School or Classical forms depending on the typology.

http://www.kollhoff.de/en/index.html

Credits:

Register is brought to you by the Department of Architecture & Landscape at Kingston University.

fada.kingston.ac.uk/al/

Head of Department: Eleanor Suess

Register Editor: Timothy Smith

Interviewer: Timothy Smith & Jonathan Taylor

Audio: Justin Howard

In this episode we are joined by Oliver Lutyens and Thomas Padmanabhan.

The work of their practice is thoughtful and scholarly, and yet open minded and lyrical. In teasing out the fundamental tension between façade and plan they have developed a characterful and playful expressive language through a series of modest residential developments. Invested in a deep knowledge of the history of architecture, they critically examine contemporary tectonics in a search for an appropriate civic language.

They do not seek significance in monumentality or in the weight of material expression. Rather they find it by considering external insulation, rain screens and winter gardens, as valid sources of architectural investigation. Informed by precedents these technologies are each tuned to give a quiet dignity to the ordinary ways we must make buildings today.

http://luetjens-padmanabhan.ch

Credits:

Register is brought to you by the Department of Architecture & Landscape at Kingston University.

fada.kingston.ac.uk/al/

Head of Department: Eleanor Suess

Register Editor: Timothy Smith

Interviewer: Andrew Clancy

Audio: Justin Howard

In this episode we are joined by Prof Elizabeth Hatz, of the KTH in Stockholm and SAUL in Limerick. Her early built projects enjoy a lightness of touch, grounded in the deep Swedish culture of architecture and yet playful and ambiguously figurative.

Her teaching gained attention for the deep connection she makes between drawing and thinking, and it is this territory she has worked in in recent years. A wide range of practitioners value her voice in drawing out the latent qualities of drawings, and articualting their broader value to the discipline.

Writing in the recent Quart Verlag book of Markli's drawings she writes "The drawing for the architect is where everything is open, until it is built... ...architecture undergoes continuing change and alteration through its lifetime, it is not finished when it is built; it merely starts its own life. Therefore we could also reconnect the built to the realm of the sketch, the essay and the fragment. And stand in front of it, both with the mark of will and the promising openness of some incertitude"

In this conversation she speaks of this act of looking, of being comfortable with doubt in process. Above all else she talks eloquently about the necessary time in both learning and making architecture.

Credits:

Register is brought to you by the Department of Architecture & Landscape at Kingston University.

fada.kingston.ac.uk/al/

Head of Department: Eleanor Suess

Register Editor: Timothy Smith

Interviewer: Andrew Clancy

Audio: Justin Howard

In this episode we are joined by Prof Terunobu Fujimori and Takeshi Hayatsu.

Their collaboration through the work of Unit 5 here in Kingston (run by Takeshi) is reaching a culmination this year with the making of a Japanese teahouse for the Barbican Japanese House exhibition.

In this discussion we talk about how Prof Fujimori started to make buildings, and the challenges he faces as he now works on progressively larger works. We talk about the value of theory and criticism, and about the times when it is necessary to let the work talk for itself.

https://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=19951

Credits:

Register is brought to you by the Department of Architecture & Landscape at Kingston University.

fada.kingston.ac.uk/al/

Head of Department: Eleanor Suess

Unit 5 Leader: Takeshi Hayatsu

Register Editor: Timothy Smith

Interviewer: Andrew Clancy

Audio: Justin Howard

In this episode we are joined by David Grandorge - an architect, photographer and academic living and working in London. As a photographer he undertakes commissioned work, collaborating with architects, artists and art institutions. He also makes work independently. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions including the Venice (2008) and Prague (2005) biennales and has been published internationally in magazines, journals and books. He has written several published articles on architecture and photography. David is a also a senior lecturer in structure, construction and materials at the the Cass School of Architecture, London Metropolitan University and leads Diploma Unit 7. He has been a visiting lecturer, tutor and/or critic at the University of Bath, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, ETH Zurich, Cambridge University and Kingston University.

In this conversation we talk through David's history as a practitioner and educator. He talks about the importance of architects such as the Smithsons in developing his views on the subject, and what he sees as the challenges facing architects today, with a particular focus on London.

Credits:

Register is brought to you by the Department of Architecture & Landscape at Kingston University.

fada.kingston.ac.uk/al/

Head of Department: Eleanor Suess

Register Editor: Timothy Smith

Interviewer: Andrew Clancy

Audio: Justin Howard

In this episode we are joined by the Developer, Historian and Architect Crispin Kelly.

Crispin is a developer with a deep understanding of architecture, most evidenced by his studies at the AA, but more pertinently by the space he has made for thoughtful work in the risky and contested world of private development. His willingness to personally back talented architects in the making of small and medium scale work gives him an insight into our discipline tempered by the contingencies of economics and return. Most recently he has been working with Peter Salter on the housing complex at Walmer Yard, Peters first built work in many years.

In this interview he discusses his education, and career. He shares his thoughts on housing, profit, and affordability. Along the way he gives a detailed insight into what it was like working with his former teacher Peter Salter.

Credits:

Register is brought to you by the Department of Architecture & Landscape at Kingston University.

fada.kingston.ac.uk/al/

Head of Department: Eleanor Suess

Register Editor: Timothy Smith

Interviewer: Andrew Clancy

Audio: Justin Howard

In this episode Andrew Clancy is joined by Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats of Flores Prats Architects.

(NOTE: During the conversation we have an extended conversation about their Casa Balaguer project - being able to refer to the drawings and images might be useful to understand this part! http://www.floresprats.com/archive/palau_balaguer/)

Flores Prats work with a lyrical precision, working into and out of the contexts where it is sited. Sites are read formally and culturally with memory and the incidental valued as a site for discovery.

The roots of the practice lie in the time that Eva and Ricardo spent working with the late Enric Miralles and the investigations of this time continue to be a source of agitation and delight. Disarmingly modest when they speak they do so directly and with no artifice.

In their built works disparate elements are held in an equilibrium in which everything impinges on everything else in a choreography at once gestural and deeply felt. Familiar elements are woven into new guises at once new and apposite. In this reworking their essentials become more vitally manifest.

In this interview they talk through how they met in the offices of Enric Miralles, and how they see their work relative to his. The culture of drawing is discussed in depth, not least how they use hand drawings as a living working method in their studio, as a way to see the contexts where they work.

http://www.floresprats.com

Credits:

Register is brought to you by the Department of Architecture & Landscape at Kingston University.

fada.kingston.ac.uk/al/

Head of Department: Eleanor Suess

Register Editor: Timothy Smith

Interviewer: Andrew Clancy

Audio: Justin Howard