[Applause]
terrifyingly view Google radical
architecture this slide comes up it’s
this house which is about the most
conventional way you can do architecture
so this is the building conceived of by
a private client lived in by a private
client delivered in a conventional way
clad in a few interesting things and
that purports to be radical making if
that isn’t radical thinking what will
explore in the next 10 minutes or so is
what radical thinking could be this of
course is Zaha and c is a self-defined
avant-garde architect and yet this is
architecture just with a few deck chairs
rearranged it carries on as the
production of form and taste and nothing
else so how can we escape the production
of form and taste as designers peter
salta is an architect who’s kind of
beyond cool he went to the architectural
Association he teaches at the
architectural Association this building
was delivered for a student of his
Crispin Kelly delivered by another
student of his Meredith Bowles
photographed by Elaine Bonet
so is this radical making but of course
this is no different from a footballers
house in Wilmslow the only way it’s
different is that the shape of it the
color of it and your own taste the two
buildings are identical in the way
they’re conceived we architects like to
think of ourselves as visionaries this
is Howard Roark a kind of fascist white
loan hero
look a boozy air much the same in many
ways this is a housing scheme called
Pesach that he designed it’s white it’s
pure and when he went back 30 years
later he asked what people had added and
he was told there needs this hints what
alternative could be this is a housing
scheme designed by Elemental architects
they didn’t have enough money to design
the whole house so they designed half a
house which is this
was then an invitation for people to
fill in the gaps this is some of the
gaps they filled in this is another
model of the same building typology that
suggests how designers can hand over an
agency to other people who sit outside
this little world we call architecture
that we jealously guard with little
fence around this is housing as we
deliver in Britain this is house
building designed by volume house
builders the tragedy of this is that
whatever building is put into this
master plan whoever designs any one of
these buildings it’ll be a disaster this
is a street in saffron walden designed
without any architects and yet it’s one
of the most successful models of housing
we have how have we forgotten how to do
housing like this this is my local
village Castle Combe again built without
architects and yet it’s hailed as one of
the greatest models of housing and urban
design that we have how we’ve forgotten
how to do this this is what we do there
are a few models this is al Marin
Holland where there’s a few simple rules
that every house has to follow you might
look at this and think that this is a
disaster
this is a kind of anarchy there’s two
rules a house has to meet the street and
meet its neighbor beyond that you can do
anything what would it look like if we
started to think about designing
communities like that over time they
will get better and we would establish a
new vernacular where you could do
anything within certain constraints and
actually that’s how Safin Walden was
conceived
that’s how Castle Combe was conceived
and that is potentially a model for
housing freeing up how we design things
this is Lincoln that’s how Lincoln was
conceived this is almost every
architects favorite building it’s
designed without a client it’s designed
not to be used it’s photographed without
any people in it when you ask an
architect what’s good about it they’ll
tell you well it’s a grid within a grid
within a grid of course it’s good it’s
an abstract exercise this is what we
need to stop doing these are the sort of
places that need architecture this is a
programming that
at the south and east area of Bristol
has the highest levels of teenage
pregnancy the lowest levels of adult
literacy in the United Kingdom this is
how we treat buildings this is how
buildings treat us so it isn’t
surprising that we end up with reservoir
all over our buildings but a question I
have is how can buildings receive the
stuff of life and still thrive how can
they take the stuff of people and still
thrive how can they take the way they
used and still thrive this is one model
it’s a charity set up in Bristol to
rehabilitate excluded children this is a
program where resident artists come in
to children to work with children to
find a way back into mainstream
education this is a program that
Nicholas Serota called the greatest
model of art education we have not
because of the building but because of
the way the children become the managing
directors that write the checks that
appoint the resident artists that coax
them back into mainstream education this
is a primary school that delivered their
own dining hall with the group of
children that incorporated lessons in
design architecture sustainability cost
and construction within their own
curriculum this is a primary school only
five miles from Bath where the children
built the building alongside a
contractor this is where they have their
school dinners this is our model of art
of architecture education where a lone
hero hands over expert knowledge to a
group of people that then go and do a
similar thing in the same model
what about classrooms look like this
instead one of our classrooms were
places where power was handed back to
students and instead of being a series
of experts the project’s became the
teacher this is a program set up 14
years ago where a group of people get
together every summer and build stuff
it’s a program where there are almost no
words there’s only building the project
becomes the teacher it’s a program
called studio in the woods these are
some of the projects that people have
built over the years this program is now
as part of something called the global
free unit Network where students can
come and drop into a classroom in one of
12 places in the world to design their
own
architecture education they can get
credits from there they never have to go
to a mainstream university this is one
of a number of programs along with hello
Would in Hungary and another one in
Russia that potentially is the future of
architectural education this was the
model that was borrowed from rural
studio in rural Alabama where students
got together to make things for poor
black deprived community this is the
community center that that group of
students made its called V Masons Bend
Community Center it’s made out of a
series of car wind screens and round
earth for that community this is their
church the students made out of tires
covered in mud slurry and corrugated tin
used as roof shingles this is student
housing that they made for themselves
while they live there out of shredded
waxed cardboard that can’t be recycled
this is a house they made it uses
recycled car number plates so that
potentially is a way of adding in an
agency back to students through work
like this
the architectural Association set up
recently a program where students design
and build their own buildings using
fillings from the forest this was the
first building that they built there was
tested here in bath of the material
Science Laboratory this was the building
that students built working alongside
carpenters students built this building
they then wrote their master’s thesis on
what they learned building this this
used waste timber scavenged from the
forest that couldn’t be used for any
other purpose so what if that was our
architectural education this is another
student project that students built to
build a prototype house showing how for
a hundred and fifty thousand pounds you
could build a house just within material
source within five hundred yards and yet
these are still buildings conceived of
by architects delivered delivered by
architects where are the magicians the
mathematicians and the ordinary people
this is a model of practice perhaps
which exists three miles from Bar
where there are no architects there are
only the mathematicians the magicians
and a way of practice that actually is
indistinguishable from rural life the
way we make buildings is just to use the
materials we have to hand and nothing
else no drawings no conventional skills
no craftsmen just amateurs a way of
designing buildings to become a kind of
rural infrastructure that need no craft
need no expertise there just buildings
that rural people can do without the
kind of high ideals of the craftsman or
the high ideals of the architect that
buildings built the zero cost and the
buildings built with zero waste these
are some of them yeah
Western bird Arboretum close to here
showed how a rural community can do
buildings for themselves with just the
materials they have to hand this was a
series of buildings delivered by Western
Burt with their own people with their
own skills to show how they could just
use the materials they have to make the
buildings they needed so my thesis is
unless we escape the production of form
and taste unless we hand over buildings
that have agency unless we consider other ways of designing we’re doomed
terrifyingly view Google radical
architecture this slide comes up it’s
this house which is about the most
conventional way you can do architecture
so this is the building conceived of by
a private client lived in by a private
client delivered in a conventional way
clad in a few interesting things and
that purports to be radical making if
that isn’t radical thinking what will
explore in the next 10 minutes or so is
what radical thinking could be this of
course is Zaha and c is a self-defined
avant-garde architect and yet this is
architecture just with a few deck chairs
rearranged it carries on as the
production of form and taste and nothing
else so how can we escape the production
of form and taste as designers peter
salta is an architect who’s kind of
beyond cool he went to the architectural
Association he teaches at the
architectural Association this building
was delivered for a student of his
Crispin Kelly delivered by another
student of his Meredith Bowles
photographed by Elaine Bonet
so is this radical making but of course
this is no different from a footballers
house in Wilmslow the only way it’s
different is that the shape of it the
color of it and your own taste the two
buildings are identical in the way
they’re conceived we architects like to
think of ourselves as visionaries this
is Howard Roark a kind of fascist white
loan hero
look a boozy air much the same in many
ways this is a housing scheme called
Pesach that he designed it’s white it’s
pure and when he went back 30 years
later he asked what people had added and
he was told there needs this hints what
alternative could be this is a housing
scheme designed by Elemental architects
they didn’t have enough money to design
the whole house so they designed half a
house which is this
was then an invitation for people to
fill in the gaps this is some of the
gaps they filled in this is another
model of the same building typology that
suggests how designers can hand over an
agency to other people who sit outside
this little world we call architecture
that we jealously guard with little
fence around this is housing as we
deliver in Britain this is house
building designed by volume house
builders the tragedy of this is that
whatever building is put into this
master plan whoever designs any one of
these buildings it’ll be a disaster this
is a street in saffron walden designed
without any architects and yet it’s one
of the most successful models of housing
we have how have we forgotten how to do
housing like this this is my local
village Castle Combe again built without
architects and yet it’s hailed as one of
the greatest models of housing and urban
design that we have how we’ve forgotten
how to do this this is what we do there
are a few models this is al Marin
Holland where there’s a few simple rules
that every house has to follow you might
look at this and think that this is a
disaster
this is a kind of anarchy there’s two
rules a house has to meet the street and
meet its neighbor beyond that you can do
anything what would it look like if we
started to think about designing
communities like that over time they
will get better and we would establish a
new vernacular where you could do
anything within certain constraints and
actually that’s how Safin Walden was
conceived
that’s how Castle Combe was conceived
and that is potentially a model for
housing freeing up how we design things
this is Lincoln that’s how Lincoln was
conceived this is almost every
architects favorite building it’s
designed without a client it’s designed
not to be used it’s photographed without
any people in it when you ask an
architect what’s good about it they’ll
tell you well it’s a grid within a grid
within a grid of course it’s good it’s
an abstract exercise this is what we
need to stop doing these are the sort of
places that need architecture this is a
programming that
at the south and east area of Bristol
has the highest levels of teenage
pregnancy the lowest levels of adult
literacy in the United Kingdom this is
how we treat buildings this is how
buildings treat us so it isn’t
surprising that we end up with reservoir
all over our buildings but a question I
have is how can buildings receive the
stuff of life and still thrive how can
they take the stuff of people and still
thrive how can they take the way they
used and still thrive this is one model
it’s a charity set up in Bristol to
rehabilitate excluded children this is a
program where resident artists come in
to children to work with children to
find a way back into mainstream
education this is a program that
Nicholas Serota called the greatest
model of art education we have not
because of the building but because of
the way the children become the managing
directors that write the checks that
appoint the resident artists that coax
them back into mainstream education this
is a primary school that delivered their
own dining hall with the group of
children that incorporated lessons in
design architecture sustainability cost
and construction within their own
curriculum this is a primary school only
five miles from Bath where the children
built the building alongside a
contractor this is where they have their
school dinners this is our model of art
of architecture education where a lone
hero hands over expert knowledge to a
group of people that then go and do a
similar thing in the same model
what about classrooms look like this
instead one of our classrooms were
places where power was handed back to
students and instead of being a series
of experts the project’s became the
teacher this is a program set up 14
years ago where a group of people get
together every summer and build stuff
it’s a program where there are almost no
words there’s only building the project
becomes the teacher it’s a program
called studio in the woods these are
some of the projects that people have
built over the years this program is now
as part of something called the global
free unit Network where students can
come and drop into a classroom in one of
12 places in the world to design their
own
architecture education they can get
credits from there they never have to go
to a mainstream university this is one
of a number of programs along with hello
Would in Hungary and another one in
Russia that potentially is the future of
architectural education this was the
model that was borrowed from rural
studio in rural Alabama where students
got together to make things for poor
black deprived community this is the
community center that that group of
students made its called V Masons Bend
Community Center it’s made out of a
series of car wind screens and round
earth for that community this is their
church the students made out of tires
covered in mud slurry and corrugated tin
used as roof shingles this is student
housing that they made for themselves
while they live there out of shredded
waxed cardboard that can’t be recycled
this is a house they made it uses
recycled car number plates so that
potentially is a way of adding in an
agency back to students through work
like this
the architectural Association set up
recently a program where students design
and build their own buildings using
fillings from the forest this was the
first building that they built there was
tested here in bath of the material
Science Laboratory this was the building
that students built working alongside
carpenters students built this building
they then wrote their master’s thesis on
what they learned building this this
used waste timber scavenged from the
forest that couldn’t be used for any
other purpose so what if that was our
architectural education this is another
student project that students built to
build a prototype house showing how for
a hundred and fifty thousand pounds you
could build a house just within material
source within five hundred yards and yet
these are still buildings conceived of
by architects delivered delivered by
architects where are the magicians the
mathematicians and the ordinary people
this is a model of practice perhaps
which exists three miles from Bar
where there are no architects there are
only the mathematicians the magicians
and a way of practice that actually is
indistinguishable from rural life the
way we make buildings is just to use the
materials we have to hand and nothing
else no drawings no conventional skills
no craftsmen just amateurs a way of
designing buildings to become a kind of
rural infrastructure that need no craft
need no expertise there just buildings
that rural people can do without the
kind of high ideals of the craftsman or
the high ideals of the architect that
buildings built the zero cost and the
buildings built with zero waste these
are some of them yeah
Western bird Arboretum close to here
showed how a rural community can do
buildings for themselves with just the
materials they have to hand this was a
series of buildings delivered by Western
Burt with their own people with their
own skills to show how they could just
use the materials they have to make the
buildings they needed so my thesis is
unless we escape the production of form
and taste unless we hand over buildings
that have agency unless we consider other ways of designing we’re doomed
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