2006 - 2007: Ancient + Modern
Simon Herron, Susanne Isa
Berlin to Istanbul
The aspirations of Unit 16, like architecture itself, are a moving target, to explore and meet the evolving demands and needs of the 21st Century. Projects are not just illustrations of a theoretical position but also a reflection of the individual student's character and experience. The unit demands formal and conceptual sophistication whilst remaining deeply suspicious of a consistency of STYLE.
The brief is to be treated as an open-ended analytical tool for creative thought.
The question is "What if?", "What is?", "Why not?"
You will need observation and intuition as seemingly unrelated strands of thought and information can lead to unpredictable results. Use drawings and models as experimental tools. Technology is seen as a means not meaning.
As for architecture and the architect, the unit is biased towards "learning about" rather than learning "to be". Think more like the "amateur" as defined a hundred years ago in DJ Taylor's recent book on sporting Corinthians, "'Amateur' was a compliment to someone who played a game simply for the love of it. A hundred years later, it is a by-word for cack-handed incompetence."
"The future is but the obsolete in reverse." - Vladimir Nabokov
"Mud sometimes gives the illusion of depth." - Marshall McLuhan
"Purity is obscurity." - Ogden Nash