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LOSING OURSELVES

NOVEMBER 2016

“Losing Myself” is not only the title, but also an accurate reflection of my experience during the journey towards realising the Irish contribution to this years Venice Architecture Biennale. It was one of both discovery and despondency, through some ups and downs that offered an insight into the demands of setting up an exhibition on the world stage.

Over a period of 6 months, we delved into the subject of dementia, to help form a strong body of research to support what would eventually become a final projection as an interactive piece in the depths of the large warehouses of the old Arsenale. The intention being that the installation would attempt to convey all of our findings yet at the same time create a sense of elation through its experience. Using the practice’s first-hand knowledge of working with people affected by this condition for over a decade through a project with the Alzheimer’s Centre in Dublin, offered us the opportunity to re-imagine designing a building through engagement with users of the Orchard Centre. It was clear to us from the very beginning that any proposal called for a much deeper long-lasting message that, as the exhibition’s curator Alejandro Aravena advised, should offer other professionals in our field the ability to learn from our lessons experienced.

We chose to do this as most architects would, through our drawings, and through our understanding of designing spaces for people with dementia.

All of a sudden and without much warning, our day-to-day workings as architects in the practice shifted, forcing us to hone our unkempt skills as trained drafters, creative writers and experienced PR and marketing experts; not to mention mediators, micro-managers and tough administrators. To say the process was challenging would be an understatement, yet fulfilling nonetheless.

The first sight into the magnitude of the task at hand was made clear once a score was established, setting out – like a script to a film – the sequence of drawings that would help to describe the day in the life of the inhabitants of the Orchard centre. This formed – layer after layer – a choreographed piece to be projected onto the smooth concrete floor, made up of a drawing count well into their hundreds. With this unexpected realisation we worked intensely to devise a new plan. One that involved a collaborative effort, and considerable favours from our peers and our friends who ultimately brought new ideas and a fresh take on such a complex and fascinating subject.

With renewed enthusiasm and a newly formed 16-strong team of drafters we ensued in a fortnight of drawing, line after line, all in a continuous motion of ink on the trace. The small studio next door to our office transformed into a workshop, filled with references and images of the Orchard Centre in Dublin to help inspire, with each of us in teams of four sat at specially designed drafting stations that recorded every move.

In the wake of this tremendous task, and whilst the pieces of the giant drawing puzzle were assembled, we worked through the strict limitations of the conditions set by the site to design the plainest solution to help hold our projectors carefully in place on elegant brass legs; known to us as the “Quadpods”. These creature-like contraptions, designed as simply as possible with the most delicate of touches to the ground, in order to impede on the ultimate purpose; to project the constructed image of the occupied Alzheimer’s Centre and in it’s daily life through inhabitation.

Following months of critical review, energised discussions and our inherent need to agonise over every detail we packed up the van and began our last stretch of the journey with the install in Venice. The logistics of fabricating and transporting our kit of parts to the old docks of the Artiglieri executed like a military operation thanks to the efficiency of our technical and construction team, Art AV. Tightly packed in large wooden crates the slender legs looked like swords prepared for a Royal Guards’ procession. Day after day we worked into the night with each and every task bringing the piece closer to life. All around us things starting to happen, with everyone working towards the final crescendo; the Biennale’s grand and highly anticipated opening.

Whilst we all had different ideas of how the research would ultimately embody itself as an installation, it was never clear how and if the message would successfully be conveyed to its wider audience. What can be said is that the most enjoyable response from the piece was the look of bewilderment coupled with wonder that fill the faces of visitors in the space. At that moment, a sudden comprehension came to life. Onlookers were invited into the daily rituals of the characters in a building that through circumstances of the mind experience the world with difficulty. It was a message we wanted to paint; that our ability to construct the built world around us in our mind, slowly becomes more challenged in the process of developing Alzheimer’s. Architects and designers have opportunities to address this issue front on, which is even more critical given that we are all likely to live longer.

A culmination of a body of research has emerged that we hope will help architects, practitioners and individuals dealing with dementia alike, to learn ways in which we can address this prominent condition that affects the way humans navigate and orientate themselves in space.

REFLECTIONS ON IMAGES OF HERITAGE

OCTOBER 2014

A few months ago I revisited my 5^th year dissertation: “The Parthenon (Elgin) Marbles; their essence and their absence”, as the possibility of writing a joint article with my MSc supervisor arose. Reading it again after so long felt like meeting an old friend; familiar and at once curiously foreign.

The much-contested issue of the Parthenon (Elgin) Marbles is well known. Since 1965 it is the subject of international political debate while by the mid ‘80s, when the first official request to the British government for their reinstitution was made, it became a national issue. The British arguments for the non-repatriation are also well documented and until now neither the British Museum nor the British Government seem particularly keen to return them.

This however had not been the burning question in mind when writing the dissertation. Having assumed that they would not be returned (and not really questioning it as right or wrong) what intrigued me was how the building, having been proclaimed a catalyst for their return, would be designed to deal with their probable absence.

Until and including 2008 the widespread rhetoric was that the spaces must remain empty in anticipation of their return so as to remind the viewer that the museum will “remain incomplete as long as the Elgin Marbles sit in the Duveen Room of the British Museum”[1]. Upon the museum’s completion however the adopted solution was to exhibit casts of the missing pieces instead, “in order to suggest to the viewer how the monument might look like when complete”[2]

Having traced the history of the display of the Parthenon Marbles in Britain and at the British Museum (ranging from the ‘cabinet of curiosities’ approach through to a more modern curatorial attitude) and the influence they had had in its architecture, I approached the subject through a ‘semiology’ lens and considered the philosophy and meaning of ‘void’ while examining architectural examples of how empty spaces, when displayed correctly, can have a powerful meaning. The resulting conclusion was that even if the Parthenon Marbles were never exhibited within the new museums’ walls, their absent presence could still be felt through a careful portrayal of their void so as not to resort to a seemingly trite and rather defeatist attitude of using a plaque or indeed casts. Evidently, the message of the void would need to be conveyed in a way as to allow an ‘open’ reading while not being so ‘open’ that it prevents us from recognising in the message a formalizable structure.[3] An empty space would then not appear as “a deficiency, a failure to fill up a cavity or gap… but a bringing – forth.”[4]

Looking back now, the discourse was interesting if slightly self-righteous. Inadvertently, the conclusion reached could read as a glorified absence that would become a pressure vehicle for their return, because it is where they belong. But do we own heritage? Heritage is thought of as underpinning our roots and the importance we bestow on the material culture “plays a vital representational role in defining national identity”[5]; as such any discourse is incredibly complex and inherently political, so much so that it becomes personal.

When I first saw an image of the façade for the athlete’s residential building within the Stratford regeneration I thought it superficial, an ornament of post colonisation, almost hubristic. Reading Niall’s ‘Peplos: The dissimulating façade’ got me thinking about this more. When the Marbles were removed from the temple they began a different journey, their identity was altered “from deep walling elements to thin relief panels” while “their dissolution, replication and dispersal”[6] made them idealistically present but always lost [7]; they don’t ‘belong’ anywhere. Maybe this facade should not be offending me but helping me to recognise the expression of appreciation for the ‘lost’ pieces of a timeless masterpiece that could almost read as a celebrated protest.

…

_{[1] Sands, H. (2008) “Henry Sands says Athens’ new museum is missing its Marbles” Acropolis Now [online] http://www.elginism.com/new-acropolis-museum/the-new-acropolis-museum-needs-its-marbles-to-complete-it/20080827/1289/ (Accessed 3^rd March 2013)
[2] Plantzos, D. (2011) “Acropolismus”, Antiquity, no.85, p.623, [Online] http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/085/ant0850613.htm (Accessed 9^th October 2012)
[3] Caesar M. (1999) Umberto Eco: Philosophy, Semiotics and the Work of Fiction, Polity Press, Cambridge, p.65.
[4] Leach N. (1997) Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, Routledge, Taylor & Francis group, London, p.123.
[5] Smith, L. (2006) Uses of Heritage, New York, Routledge, p.48
[6] McLaughlin, N., (2012) “Peplos: The Dissimulating Façade”in Archithese.
[7] Ibid.}

_{Pinelopi Antoniou studied at the University of Cambridge and the Edinburgh College of Art. She holds a BArch (Hons) and a Diploma in Architecture. She  was nominated for the RIBA President’s Medal in 2005. She joined Niall McLaughlin Architects in 2013 and has worked on a private house in London, a private house in the Cotswolds and is currently on the Outpatients building in Oxford.}