New award to support young architects

ar + d Award for Emerging Architecture 2003 – calling for entries. Closing date: 16 September 2003. http://www.pam.org.my/ar+d.asp

The AR has a new sponsor for their awards for emerging architecture http://www.arplus.com/ard/arawards05/arawards05.pdf Entries are due September 13, 2005.

A large part of these awards, the AAI stuff included, seem to be concocted by people from the outside of architecture looking in,… I wonder if they actually saw it from the inside in a proper perspective, would they realise the serious structural repair and re-building work which needs to be done at a much lower level within the profession. Rather than constantly looking to prop up the exaggerated curve with the ‘fat tails’ I refer to in this thread:

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=4016

Seriously, it seems to be a constant problem with architects. Every reward they ever receive, or recognition seems to reward them for being individuals which ‘stand out’ from the rest of the crowd, at a time, when it is more incumbent upon architects than ever before, to get back to being part of something, anything,… just to integrate more. This seems to come more naturally to other disiplines than that of the young architect – the architect is without a datum in large measure, a base from which to build. This kind of ‘award strategy’ just exaggerates the curve, along which all architects are distributed in terms of talent and exposure, is wrecking the profession from within, in my opinion.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

In relation to the above comment

“Every reward they ever receive, or recognition seems to reward them for being individuals which ‘stand out’ from the rest of the crowd, at a time, when it is more incumbent upon architects than ever before, to get back to being part of something, anything,… just to integrate more. “

it seems to me that in order for architecture to integrate more with its auxilliary technical professions, it needs the experience of someone who has worked with these people/crafts/skills. In saying this I am thinking of Aalto’s close collaboration with furniture makers when he was exploring the possibilities of bending wood, or Gehry’s alliance with the CATIA tech guys. But my point is that in each of these cases, the profession benefitted from the experience of a mature architect rather than simply the celebrated imagination of someone who “stood out.” And to me it seems a bit silly to limit this prize to young architects when they are not essentially the ones making the break throughs. And this is coming from a recent graduate.

Or if you listened to Des MacMahon speak a year or so ago, in Bolton Street, he compared how his early background in pottery, later was of help to him, when trying to conceptualise the design of his Croke Park Stadium in section. I mean, things on a totally different scale, surely, but still Des was quite sure of his design for Croke Park, because it reminded him so much of the pot slowly rising from the wheel as it spun around. If you really think about the form of Croke Park, it has got something like a potter’s form to it, in that it repeats a perfect repetition of a complex section shape, all the ways around. I know it is a ‘rough’ architecture, and has its detractors, but it was just the way that Des spoke about his building in his talk. I mean, how fanciful does one need to make a structure, which only gets used at weekends anyhow? Of that scale, and for a ‘voluntary’ organisation like the GA?

Another building, which reminds me a lot too of the potters idea of architecture, is another building by MacMahon – the Bolton Street DIT extension. While attending both the architectural end-of-year exhibitions at UCD and Bolton Street this year, I was aware of how in UCD, one was fully able to use the courtyard in the centre of the complex as part of the circulation between the various studios. This was very interesting, because the courtyard formed a natural meeting place, where the wine could be consumed and you could pause momentarily, as you ‘took in’ the work of the students, to chew some fat with yours buddies, on a nice summers evening. In some way too, Des MacMahon, somehow, in the context of a multistorey building on Henrietta St., managed to pull something as close to an outdoor courtyard as you could get – from the new studio areas with their nice vaulted ceiling with north lighting.

For some reason, people drinking their wine in Bolton Street congregated around that ‘semi-outdoor’ feeling space, of those new Studios, as the next best thing, to the kind of outdoor courtyard atmosphere that UCD Architecture school has got. Which just made me realise how unique a situation the top level of a multistorey building actually is – the opportunities it provides to house a kind of summertime ‘coming together’ of people,… the only pity I suppose is that Des MacMahon wasn’t allowed to go a little bit further in Bolton Street new Studios and perhaps have some bit of outdoor space at that level… so one could literally have a courtyard in the middle of the city, on top of a roof.

Dunno, how it would work. But faculties of Architecture which live on the roof of an Institution, in the middle of a city like Dublin are at a disadvantage in some ways. It is nice to study in a building like UCD Architecture school, where you know instinctively you do have the freedom to walk out a door, and you are on the ground level – as opposed to Bolton Street building, where your journey is intermediated by a long bouncing step routine, running down through a fire escape stairs. The difference is subtle I know, but I often think, the ability of UCD students to relax enough and make all of those nice models, and explore concepts of occupation and territory in depth, in their design proposals, is linked to the fact, they exist on the ground or have decent access to the ground level.

Bolton Street Architecture Faculty, I have my suspicions, might have suffered from added stresss, owing to the lack of ability to access the ground immediately outside its doors. There was a distinct lack of models thrown around the studios in Bolton Street – Bolton Street studios, I think, will never fully manage to disguise the feeling of being what they are – space, that could be used for spec office building. It is, as if, it is disallowed to make a mess, such as making a proper architectural model entails, because you feel as if you are doing something entirely inappropriate, given the ‘office environment’ feel of the whole place. It struggles valiantly to break out of that, I know, but ultimately, you expect the cleaning staff to come in some day in BS, and dump your nice model – probably doesn’t happen – but you feel that should happen – in an office building – along with all of the ‘half-eaten’ sandwiches and empty coke tins. I know this will improve when they finally get to Grange Gorman, but that is still a while down the road.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Just while I remember it, …

If you are interested in following this theme btw, you should investigate books comparing the pilots of the second world war, from Britain and in contrast, from Germany. Where the Germans, adopted a very sophisticated system of medals, and awards for their pilots, which encouraged them to fly as ‘Aces’ to the detriment of the whole group – and the German war effort as a whole – the British never adopted this ‘award’ system, and thereby managed to learn to fly as squandrons, and to develop very sophisticated Ray-Dar techniques, calling centres, look-out posts, communication systems and command centres, which coordinated the efforts of the air force as a team, rather than celebrating the individual ‘Red Baron’.

I think, that can be compared quite neatly, with the system for Architects here in Ireland, where you have a lot of ‘Red Baron’s’ flying around the skies and very little coordination on the ground. There is one old movie in particular, which I remember, looks at this theme very well. If I remember it, I will post it up. But let us just remember, it was the vulnerability of the Germans from the air, in particular, which ultimately cost them in the final months of the second world war. In the same way, the entire building industry is Ireland, is facing, very heavy going on allowing design to really ‘breakthrough’, despite having the very best of Ace Pilots now, the sum is still not much greater than the parts.

Brian O’ Hanlon.