It is a very nice news, U:Lab.spb project together with our many collaborators has been published in Tatlin Mono Catalogue of young russian architects 2013-14, many thanks to Jane Repina for the invitation and support and to all guys we were very lucky to do the work together.
Also it was very nice to see all our collaborators from the Branchpoint community and some of our former students published in this catalog.
This August Simplex nois in collaboration with Branchpoint project and Designet.ru organised Spotcamp Sochi. Spot camp was a 2 weeks training and 2 weeks design workshop with a group of very interesting tutors and lecturers from all around the world including guys from Design Research Lab, Em Thech Architectural Association and IAAC. I really enjoyed to be a part of this venue , making a lecture and tutoring the final part of the design workshop, here you can find report about Spotcamp in russian.
The title of my lecture was "New Craftsmanship", inspired by Richard Sennett book I took an attempt to revise the idea of craft and craftsmen in the context of contemporary society, where the information technologies new fabrication technologies are changing role of designer and the relationships between designer/consumer. and designer/creation. Bioengineering, robotics and computation allow us to introduce the local intelligence within a fabrication process, this offer us to rethink the idea of what is the final product of the design process. These technologies in oppose to industrial production creates a potentiality of new production logic within a new idea of the efficiency and rationality of the product. Following Sennett ideas, we may compare new craftsman of today to engineers of victorian age, the times before the industrial line created the gap between the designer and his creation, the times when innovation tool was directly belong to the creator.
I am very pleased to announce that in June the Publication ” Critical Territories: From Academia to Praxis” has been issued. This publication constitutes a compilation of Landscape Urbanism AA Master projects, including my Landscape urbanism Master project I did in 2007-08.
"Critical Territories opens with a series of contributions to the ongoing development of theoretical perspectives before turning to elaborate, from within the academic framework of the Architectural Association, the work of Landscape Urbanism students and the agendas they have engaged with in Mexico, Sri Lanka, Dubai and China and the intensive workshops with which they have been involved in Europe. It then turns, finally, to the projects produced and realised by the Landscape Urbanist practice Groundlab."
You can check my interview about architectural education in London and Architectural Association, which I did some time ago for Designet and Tatlin magazine. Unfortunately text is only in russian.
This spring I was really glad to give a talk about Soviet Microrayons for the Spring semester Program of Architectural Association, many thanks to Naiara Vegara for the invitation. I am very grateful for a very nice discussion I had with students on transformation of meaning of the efficiency in architecture and forgotten power of building codes. Also I was very please to see the projects guys developed in the end of their program, surprisingly instead of focusing on the usual problem-solving approach, they did a quite precise research about Microrayons and postwar technology of industrial production of space and on the basis of this made an attempt to rethink this technology in the context of the contemporary city.
You may find the details about the Spring semester Program of Architectural Association here
Here is a project I was working on between 2006 and 2011 at studio Mishin in St -Petersburg. Project has been accomplished already a year ago, finally found the time to add it here.
For almost 6 years was involved into the design and construction process for this villa and designed the central piece the copper staircase. For the construction and lighting design consulting we almost for a year was working with ARUP Berlin, the construction of staircase took almost 2 years and would not be possible without local architects, engineers and craftsmen. Staircase has been published already for a while on Suckerpunchdaily and in Frame magazine.
This is a project of the villa build for the private client, project has been released between 2006 and 2013 in Las Brisas, house is situated on a steep mountain facing the sea on the west part of the Mallorca island. The challenge of the project was to cope with already existing primary structure - a reinforced-concrete frame (with a tiled roof) left abandoned on site for almost 10 years. The villa complex comprises a labyrinth of structures that descend the steep slope of the rocky mountain. This is a space whose perception is aggregated from a large number of fragments and visual impressions. One of the strongest of such impressions is the view you see as you enter the house - a double-height hall; a striking canyon, ends in a panoramic window framing the view of the picturesque harbor. 3 levels of the house are stepping down into the fluid space of the sloped garden at the bottom , triangulated surface of the garden terrace constitutes mix of teak paving and lawn, running as a continuous surface from outside into the interior of the internal SPA.
Central element of the house is a 'green gabion'- a laser-cut copper void filled with twining plants. ‘Green gabion' cross all the house from east to the west separating the villa space into living and service zones. On the north side ‘gabion’ forms the vertical green facade of the house. On western and eastern sides of the 'gabion' there are intimate private spaces - 'green' bath gardens. Passing through the house in the 'canyon' double floor open space , perforated-copper surface of ‘gabion’ folds to the house's main staircase structure. The pattern on the vertical green facade has been computed to respond to the context of the villa, bigger openings of the pattern are located in zones better exposed to the sun during the day.
Central element of the interior of the ‘Canyon’ space- the copper staircase is made from plywood panels bonded with copper. This structure has been developed together with ARUP specialists, panels has been cuted using water jet machine, later copper layer has been artificially patinated in order to have the same finishing quality copper had being outside. From inside of some panels, the fiber optics lighting is attached, to create a different lighting effects.
Most of materials and structures are experimental and became possible also because of the collaboration with local craftsman companies, who were open to risk elaborating new technologies and testing new materials.
This December I was very happy to be in some of the midterm juries in Bartlett and Architectural Association.
Particularly I really enjoyed discussion around the projects of Unit7 Shadow Cities and Cultural Process runned by Maria Fedorchenco in AA. Working with my hometown St-Petersburg and reading St-Petersburg as kaleidoscope of "collapsed utopias and experiments" guys are intended to create the projects "originated in provocations for imaginary ‘shadow cities’ – centrifuges of fragments, images and scenarios".
Another programmes I was really excited to see was Unit 19 The Living Spaces of Algorithmics 2.0: Birds of Passage runned by Mollie Claypool, Manuel Jimenez Garcia and Philippe Morel, and MArch GAD Research Cluster 4 Deep Substances: Computational Multi-Objects, runned by Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez. Very interesting briefs and extremely elaborated projects already at the midterm stage. Research Cluster 4 is focused on rethinking of Gothic architecture through the framework of new modelling and simulation techniques and innovative fabrication process such as 3d printing, guys presented series of workshops they did with extremely interesting results.
Also Landscape Urbanism program looks very interesting with quite a modified agenda, moving away from the urbanism and large scale design proposals to the development of A Pan-European Atlas what makes projects mostly focused on the ecology of natural landscapes and application of the new technologies of simulation and mapping the behavior of the natural ecology.
In October I was very glad to make a lecture Landscape Urbanism/ Dynamic Ecology for students of the Master program Design Urban Ecology in Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics. Right now guys are focused on the research on city of Kronstadt.
You can check details on this course here (in rus.) http://due.paperpaper.ru/
Please find the Report on the work we developed during this workshop here
We were really lucky to have a really great lecturers::
Rob Stuart-Smith Kokkugia, Manuel Jimenez Garcia m[a]dM design, Vadim Smahtin, Mathrioshka
"Formation and Polyvalence: "Flexible computation" "Computer, instrument or ideology"
Selforganisation of architectural matter" lecture video (in english) lecture video (in russian)
lecture video (in english)
Stanislav Rudavsky Also me and Daniyar U:Lab.spb
http://stanislavroudavski.net/ presented the lecture "Open/ Closed systems",
lecture video (in russian)
Workshop "Open / Closed Cities" from Branch Point on Vimeo.
Thanks to all students and tutors for the great work and special thanks to Hiteca for the lecture videos
Recent Comments