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
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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.
‘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