CAMBRIDGE ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS TOUR OF JESUS COLLEGE
MARCH 2017
On Wednesday 1st March the University of Cambridge Year 2 architecture students visited our West Court development at Jesus College. They were invited by Professor of Sustainable Design Koen Steemers, a Fellow and Director of Studies at Jesus College. I gave a general introduction to the project in the recently completed auditorium and was asked to cover some more specific acoustic design issues to tie in with Professor Steemers’s recent lectures on acoustics.
It was great to experience the ash-lined auditorium space occupied. With the secondary glazing installed earlier in the week, there was no disturbance from noisy Jesus Lane outside and even the buzz of the busy building site beyond the four walls of the auditorium was not noticeable.
I really enjoyed the Q&A session and was surprised at the insightful questioning and level of engagement that the Year 2 students demonstrated. There were specific questions about acoustic design – Were different room shapes considered? – and more general questions about the architecture – What informed the architectural language of the Auditorium? How was the 100-year lifespan of the building considered in the selection of materials?
Having finished in the auditorium, we crossed the courtyard to the new café pavilion and ended the tour in the basement bar below. Here the acoustics are very different with glazed tiling to the walls and brass surfaces. It was interesting to discuss how the acoustic plaster soffits, the sprung floor and the ceiling vaults might affect the sound. Again probing questions were raised about design and sustainability but I got the sense there was another question on everyone’s mind – Shouldn’t every college bar have its own microbrewery?
FRAMELESS ARCHITECTURE
AUGUST 2015
Our classification of the world is the result of a desire to impose order on the chaos we are born into. In nature we classify the species, in society we classify our relationships, and in architecture we classify the spaces we design and inhabit. In many cases, classification is a useful tool that allows us to root ourselves in time and space.
Classification can also be the enemy of imagination, suffocating our desire to wonder and discover new associations. It can limit the understanding of what surrounds us and disjoint elements that should not be separated. Framing perception can become a reductive force.
In his book Atlas: How to Carry the World on One’s Back, Didi Huberman uses ‘atlas’ in its broadest sense to mean a ‘collection of images’. Huberman explores two different ‘uses of reading’: a denotative sense in search of messages, and a connotative sense in search of montages. The dictionary is a predictable tool for the former, and the atlas is the ‘unexpected apparatus’ for the latter[1].
The atlas is frameless and endless. It surpasses boundaries and restrictions and is in a state of constant renewal. The atlas enables our imagination to trigger new associations, new relations. Although we may start with a search for the specific, we may then wander endlessly, unlimited by a defining frame.
Architectural education, architectural research and architectural practice have suffered for too long from being limited by a defining frame that has placed them in different dictionary entries. It is now time to rethink this model, which shapes our lives, our careers, and ultimately our contribution to society. If we are to replace the dictionary with the atlas, if we are to substitute the definitive meaning with the endless search for new relations, we will have a new model of architecture where education, research and practice are interwoven and intrinsic to one another.
For this new model to succeed, we must completely awaken our imagination. Education, research and practice will be symbiotic and won’t be understood without each other. As a result, transverse readings and meanings will develop within our work. These will be found not only in the individual but also in the collective. In our office, inspired by Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, we will develop our own Atlas where images of our endlessly evolving inspirations and aspirations will be captured. Our Atlas will be a new ground from which meaning, space and relationships will grow. Our Atlas will enable us to read what has never been written[2].
[1] Georges Didi-Huberman (2010). Atlas. ¿Cómo llevar el mundo a cuestas?. Madrid: TF Editores/Museo Reina Sofía . 16-17.
[2] Georges Didi-Huberman (2010). Atlas. ¿Cómo llevar el mundo a cuestas?. Madrid: TF Editores/Museo Reina Sofía . 14.