AA Projects Review

At the Architectural Association, students displayed awareness of the socio-environmental, political implications of practice and pedagogy and a desire for socially engaged architecture.

First time visitors to London's Architectural Association for Projects Review, its annual show of student work, could be understandably taken aback at what awaits them: the leafy Bloomsbury square setting and elegant Georgian façade reveals little of the chaotic warren of corridors, staircases and endless assortment of rooms inside. Even regular visitors know to come prepared to be surprised, and occasionally perplexed, by the myriad of models, drawings, photographs, videos and installations that await them each year.

As a degree show the AA's Projects Review is distinctive for a number of reasons. For one, its students are the product of the UK's only private Architecture School, whose roster of Pritzker Prize winning alumni speaks of an institution concerned less with the bricks and mortar quotidian of the discipline and more with what the director Brett Steele calls architecture as "a form of cultural knowledge, learning and enquiry." It is also the one of the few shows that does not just showcase graduate work but the output of all seven hundred of its students, from Foundation to PhD. As such it offers not just an insight into one year in the school's life but also a window into the emerging typologies, intellectual occupations and educational approaches of the discipline.

The show's set up is informed by the school's teaching structure. Year groups are divided into a number of smaller team-taught units, and each unit curates their own presence at the show. Given the individuality of the design and content of each space this makes for a rich if rather exhausting experience, one exacerbated by the curation of some of the rooms; dominating the centre of one was a large table piled high with a jumble of models, drawings and other materials, making it difficult to disentangle individual student's work. Elsewhere, the language used in some of the explanatory texts provided little assistance, emphasising the importance of architects able to communicate and make relevant their ideas, whoever their audience is.

Top: Nozomi Nakabayashi, <em>The Big Shed</em>, AA Design & Make program. Nakabayashi worked with a team of fellow students and local timber-framers to create a workshop for AA use, as part of the School's much-needed expansion and spatial reorganization. Above: Jacob Bek, Ignacio Marti and Pablo Zamorano's <em>Expandable Surface System</em> used sheet plywood as a structural material for a pavilion that combined computational design with manual construction for sustainable ends — Top: Nozomi Nakabayashi, *The Big Shed*, AA Design & Make program. Nakabayashi worked with a team of fellow students and local timber-framers to create a workshop for AA use, as part of the School's much-needed expansion and spatial reorganization. Above: Jacob Bek, Ignacio Marti and Pablo Zamorano's *Expandable Surface System* used sheet plywood as a structural material for a pavilion that combined computational design with manual construction for sustainable ends

Most of the units are more clearly articulated and worth a closer look; in an alcove along a corridor on the first floor is Intermediate 1 which focused on the highly polluted Salton Sea in the Californian desert. The unit's creation of fictional artefacts typified a speculative approach and engagement with sustainable issues evident in much of the work displayed.

Hélène Solvay, <em>Eccentric, Superfluous Entities Peacefully Protest Against Efficient and Rational Takeover of Dean Street</em>, interiors research project at 7 Meard Street — Hélène Solvay, *Eccentric, Superfluous Entities Peacefully Protest Against Efficient and Rational Takeover of Dean Street*, interiors research project at 7 Meard Street

Research is a key component of the School's activity, evident in the high quality of the graduate work. As you enter the building, on the left a room contains some of this level's output, including the Design Research Lab, led by Patrick Schumacher, and the Sustainable Environmental Design and Emergent Technologies programmes. One of the highlights of the latter was Jacob Bek, Ignacio Marti and Pablo Zamorano's Expandable Surface System that used sheet plywood as a structural material for a pavilion that combined computational design with manual construction for sustainable ends.

The show's set up is informed by the school's teaching structure. Year groups are divided into a number of smaller team-taught units, and each unit curates their own presence at the show

Left: Wesley Perrott, <em>Electric Dreams</em>, a night club imagined as a lost Arcadia. Right: New Movement Collective, dance projection at the Madrid's Matadero. Photo by Valerie Bennett — Left: Wesley Perrott, *Electric Dreams*, a night club imagined as a lost Arcadia. Right: New Movement Collective, dance projection at the Madrid's Matadero. Photo by Valerie Bennett

Their project also signaled a shift from the School's emphasis on paper architecture to the more hands-on business of construction. This was most clear across the hall, alongside a diverse grouping of largely Diploma-based work, in the Design & Make program. Located not in the School's squeezed London campus but in Hooke Park in Dorset, a suitably pastoral setting for a course deeply interested in the area's local craft traditions to re-engage with the materials and methods of making architecture. On display was a project by its first graduating student, Nozomi Nakabayashi. Entitled The Big Shed, Nakabayashi worked with a team of fellow students and local timber-framers to create a workshop for AA use, as part of the School's much-needed expansion and spatial reorganization.

Fung Tsui presented an inhabited wall, connecting the Troy acropolis with surrounding villages

The interest in craft was evident elsewhere. It was most overt in Intermediate 2 Crafted Narratives – Make-Value, Use-Value, located in the corner of a room on the upper floor containing some of the exhibition's strongest displays. Inspired by the Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi's approach to architecture, students came up with a series of interventions that followed her same improvised, site-responsive manner for buildings in London's Soho. They included Hélène Solvay's intervention in a townhouse interior and Alexander Furunes' market stall, which aimed to encourage a more participatory decision making process in the area's redevelopment.

William Gowland, <em>Here be Dragons: The unstable Landscapes of GPS</em> — William Gowland, *Here be Dragons: The unstable Landscapes of GPS*

As with any student degree show, identifying unifying trends is challenging, one made more so here by the show's layout. Overall, alongside an ongoing experimentation with new technologies and a persistent critical sensibility, there was a heightened awareness of the socio-environmental and political implications of both practice and pedagogy and a concomitant desire for socially engaged architecture. Where this work was at its strongest was when it used to speculate not just about what future buildings could be and look like, but a consideration of how they will actually be designed, made and even used in the world, both today and tomorrow. Catharine Rossi (@cat_rossi)

Doyeon Cho, room inside Oxford Street's student complex. The project devises flexible common spaces, with furniture embedded in the walls, allowing for maximum customisation of the room

Nassim Eshaghi, George Kontalonis, Jared Ramsdell, Rana Zureikat, <em>Vertical Ground Code</em> — Nassim Eshaghi, George Kontalonis, Jared Ramsdell, Rana Zureikat, *Vertical Ground Code*

How many forms can an idea take? Fantin has the answer

One material, metal; thirty-five colors; and endless possible configurations for modern, versatile, and functional furniture: design according to Fantin.