Visiting Primary, Nottingham

Friday 20 November 2015

                                                                            Fig.1

‘Primary is an artist-led space that supports creative research through artist studios and residencies, public exhibitions and events. Primary officially opened in March 2012, as has been transformed from a disused school building into a new cultural resource’ (Primary 2016). Architecturally, Primary is interesting as the original image of the school still influences the space.

During the visit, my colleagues and I had the chance to meet the artist, Craig Fisher. He is particularly interested in playing with boundaries, mixing techniques of art and craft, and creating large sculptural installations using fabrics.

It was interesting to see the artist’s atelier in comparison to an architect’s working space. There were several differences; for example, there were no computers evident, which is very rare in an architect’s working space. The space was also much colourful due to the fabrics that the artist used for his sculptures and drawings on the wall. Another comparison regarding the space is that the artist shares the atelier with another artist. Is interesting to see how each of the two define their space and put their own identity to their space, according to their personality and their work. It is interesting to see how the people influence the space and give character to the space.

                                                                  Fig 2,3 

­Artist (Craig Fisher) website: http://www.craig-fisher.com/index.htm

Reference:

Boningtongallery.co.uk, 2016 Bonington Gallery [online] Google Available at: http://www.boningtongallery.co.uk/ [Accessed 30.1.2016]

Weareprimary.org, 2016 We Are Primary | About [online] Google Available at: http://www.weareprimary.org/about/ [Accessed 30.1.2016]­


Figures:

Fig.1 Michael S , 2015
Fig 2,3 Michael S, 2015

Symposium: In Place of Architecture

Friday 6 November 2015

Bonington Gallery at Nottingham Trent University

Friday 6 November 2015 

Symposium: In Place of Architecture

My colleagues and I had the chance to visit the Symposium in the Bonington Gallery at Nottingham Trent University. The Bonington Gallery is a contemporary gallery space. Artists are invited to spend a period of time in the Gallery to create lines, marks and tones that explore and respond to the space through different processes (Bonington Gallery, 2016). 

After my BA, it was the first combine teacher/ student exhibition I visited and I was curious about what I was going to see. At the beginning, we saw the exhibition in the Main Hall of the Gallery and then the Photography Dialogue: Constructing a space for remembrance. The presented work was very meaningful as it was ‘touching’ sensitive events of our era. The BA Architecture students, as part of their research visited the National Memorial Arboretum. Most of the images in the exhibition responded to commemorative architecture.

                                                                           Fig1

The images where very meaningful giving a powerful massage to the viewers. I a map of Nottingham very interesting as it showed, key buildings and locations as memory points, some of them invisible now as have rebuild and other points with statues as remembrances.  The poster with map of Nottingham navigated me through my own memory of buildings and I was able to see how these buildings have been transformed throughout the history and into the present. I wondered about the extent to which these buildings influence people and how their existence always reminds people of events in history. There was a comment on the black wall which attracted my attention that stated ‘Always remember’, and personally, I do believe that people do remember the past, whatever happens.

                                                                  Fig. 2, 3 and 4

The idea of exhibiting the work above a black wall was very inspirational and meaningful. At the black wall everybody was invited to write their thoughts and feelings. This gave visitors the opportunity to interact and express themselves along with the artists in the exhibition.

Figures:

Fig. 1  Michael S, 2015 
Fig 2,3 and 4 Michael S, 2015

Gillespie, Kidd & Coia: Architecture 1956-1987

29 January 2016

Gillespie, Kidd & Coia: Architecture 1956-1987

The editor of the book Johnny Rodger is a writer, critic, and Professor of Urban Literature at the 

Glasgow School of Art. His research focuses on two primary aspects:

1                     Literary and Critical writing

2                     Architecture and Urbanism

Gillespie, Kidd & Coia were a Scottish architectural firm. The origins of the firm lie with the architect James Salmon. John Gaff Gillespie was hired in 1891 when the firm known as James Salmon & Son. In 1903 the firm changed its name to James Salmon & Son & Gillespie. William Alexander Kidd joined the firm in 1898 and become a partner in 1918.  Kidd became a sole partner after Gillespie’s death in 1926. In 1915 Giacomo Antonio Coia joined the firm.

Example of their work is the St Bride’s East Kilbride 1963

St Bride’s was the largest church built by the firm and could house 800 seated worshippers. It is well known of the load bearing brick walls of the main structure support a steel framed roof with patent glazing and timber slatted ceiling. Moreover, copper clad tight light cannons, visible on the exterior roofscape, focus on light down on the sanctuary and more diffuse light also filters down through the long shafts in the eastern wall.

                                                                            Fig. 1 

From the presentation of a colleague (Tu), the major aspect of personal appeal was St Peter Church. This is because my current project ‘Intervening the City’. One of the main design themes of the church is the journey within a building as noted by Kidd and Coia. Kidd and Coia used a ramp as a main element to connect the vertical and horizontal circulation of the church. The hierarchic or narrative organization of experience to facilitate the navigation also reinforces a sense of identity within the building.

                                                                         Fig 2

Macmillan and Metzstein would agree that architecture is ‘experiential’ and can be truly evaluated by inhabitation and experience it with all the senses and the mind.

For my ‘Intervening the City’ project I considered using a ramp as a main element of the micro-museum to connect the floors. This was because I had researched the Danish Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010 by BIG and the Reichstag building in Berlin (dome).  Through so doing I had come to appreciate the circular form.  Is important to analyse each of these buildings and find how the space functions and is used by the visitors so I can apply those principles to my design.

                                                                                   Fig3

Fig 4

For my ‘Intervening the City’ project I considered using a ramp as a main element of the micro-museum to connect the floors. This was because I had researched the Danish Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010 by BIG and the Reichstag building in Berlin (dome).  Through so doing I had come to appreciate the circular form.  Is important to analyse each of these buildings and find how the space functions and is used by the visitors so I can apply those principles to my design.

 Reference:

Rodger, Johnny (ed.) (2007) Gillespie, Kidd & Coia: Architecture 1956 – 1987

Figures:

Fig.1http://www.gsaarchives.net/archon/packages/digitallibrary/files/2939/pl_GKC_CEK_2_2_21.jpg

Fig.2 photograph taken from the book by Michael ,S

Fig.3 https://tessandrews.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/denmark-pavillion.jpg

Fig.4 http://www.german-way.com/imagesGW/Berlin-Reichst-spiralvw890.jpg

The location of culture by Homi Bhabha

Friday 29 January 2016

Reading: The location of culture by Homi Bhabha

                                                                            Fig.1

Homi K. Bhabha is a Professor of English and American Literature and Language and Director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University.

He is important thinker of post-colonial studies and his key concepts are hybridity, mimicry, difference and ambivalence.

The location of culture by Homi Bhabha was presented to my colleagues by me and a colleague (Arvin).

The presentation started with the question ‘What is National identity’? According to Oxford dictionary National Identity is a sense of a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language. Subsequently, we present the key concepts of the book.

What is colonisation?

Colonisation: is an ongoing process of control by which a central system of power dominates the surrounding land and its components (people, animals etc.). The term is derived from the Latin word colere, which means "to inhabit".

What is post-colonialism?

Postcolonialism is the study of the legacy of the era of European, and sometimes American, direct global domination, which ended roughly in the mid-20th century, and the residual political, socio-economic, and psychological effects of that colonial history. For Homi Bhabha the focus is on the politics, emotions and values that exist in the space between the colonizer and the colonized (Bhabha 1994)

What is hybridity?

The word hybrid meaning composed of mixed elements, to describe post- colonial people and experiences. He focus on the collective effects of colonization on peoples and cultures.

According to the book Bhabha for architects, 2010, to understand hybridity is important because it explains the interaction between different groups. Moreover, is a result caused by colonialism and contemporary globalization. It is also a process in which cultural elements change in relation to themselves and to one another.(rearticulation).

Bhabha 2010 believes that neither languages, nor cultures, nor identities are static or homogeneous and mention that cultures, identities and languages can never be full mix but are fragment.

Mimicry- Ambivalence

‘Almost the same but not quite’ Bhabha 1994

Mimicry is based on the Lacanian vision of mimicry as camouflage resulting in colonial ambivalence. Is not question of harmonizing of repression of difference but a form of resemblance that is differs from. Mimicry appears when members of a colonized society imitate and take on the culture of the colonizers.

Bhabha said that mimicry is the metonym of presence.

Almost the same but not quite- “colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable ‘Other’, as a subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite” Bhabha, 1994

Bhabha explains ambivalence as a discourse of colonialism that is contradict between the colonisers’ desire itself  repeated in the colonised and the rejection of that repeated other (the translation or the copy) in order to keep their authority. To what extent, the colonisers are also internally in conflict between their wish to repeat themselves in the colonsed and the anxiety of their disappearance as a result of repetition because if the ‘Other’ turns into the same difference is eliminated as are the grounds to claim superiority over it.

Third Space

First space: all forms of direct spatial experience that can be measured and represented (home)

Second space: cognitive processes as well as modes of construction which gives birth of geographical imagination (virtual)

Third space: In this increasingly globalised world, cultures from opposite sides of the globe are crashing and collided with each other and this is creating the third space where people must continuously navigate and articulate their own identities. It is a space in which colonial authority is challenge and hybrid identities are created. Bhabha stresses that it is a site of tension of competing powers and of insurmountable differences.  In this “in-between” space, new cultural identities are formed, reformed, and constantly in a state of becoming. Artists work in “the third space”

The colleague of me (Arvin) chose to show a video of his city Teheran, Iran in order to give as an example of how a city can lose its initial architectural identity due to colonasation and globalization. Link: https://vimeo.com/143320922

Reference:

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location Of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994

Hernández, Felipe. Bhabha For Architects. London: Routledge, 2010

Figures:

Fig1.  http://english.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/homi-bhabha-the-location-of-culture.jpg