Alliance & Rebellion: An exhibition curated by The Paper Gentlemen

From left to right: scale model by Stephen McCullough; mixed media drawing by Cameron McEwan; painting by Christy Yates.”]

McEwan C (2012) The Paper Gentlemen Exhibition View [Photograph

 

The Paper Gentlemen is a collaboration between three MArch students from the Material Unit at Dundee School of Architecture. Alliance & Rebellion is the first of a series of exhibitions which, according to the Gents, “aims to reactivate a dormant space and encourage collaboration within our varied arts community.”

The exhibition is currently on show at The Faircity Auction House, First Floor Gallery, 52-54 Canal Street, Perth.
The drawing continues the After Architect Aldo Rossi series. A montage of the twelve projects that illustrate Rossi’s A Scientific Autobiography, more of which in a forthcoming Post.

 

Continuing the After Architect Aldo Rossi series.”]

McEwan C (2012) The Paper Gentlemen Exhibition Detail [Mixed media drawing with chalk, charcoal, graphite, and india ink on gessoed Fabriano

 

 

The Interplay of Text and Image

topography of the portfolio”]

McEwan C (2011) Supervision Works in Progress 29 November [Photographs

 

In the dull lit Studio space of this November morning, I had a gruelling Supervision on the interplay between text and image in this PhD.

Some snaps…

portfolio and phd”]

McEwan C (2011) Supervision Works in Progress 29 November [Photographs

 

The Architecture of the City at IUAV

“]

McEwan C (2011) Exhibition Views of Aldo Rossi The Architecture of the City After 45 Years at IUAV Venice [photograph

 

First published by Marsilio in Padova, Italy 1966, Aldo Rossi’s The Architecture of the City celebrates its forty-fifth anniversary this year with a new 2011 Italian edition. In honour of this, the IUAV University of Venice organised an international conference and exhibition, supported by the Fondazione Aldo Rossi, the MAXXI Architettura, Rome and Casabella, the journal that Rossi first wrote for and then edited.

Aiming to promote an open and wide discussion on all things Rossian, the conference first recalled the original context that generated the text; then mapped the network of translations that The Architecture of the City undertook; and finally it investigated the contemporary threads of Rossi’s legacy.

Alberto Ferlenga, Director of Doctoral Studies at IUAV and author of many texts on Aldo Rossi, introduced the conference by stating that The Architecture of the City was conceived as an, “in progress synthesis of a particular time period for urban studies.” He said that the matters mentioned by Rossi are still only partly developed and waiting for further consideration by an architectural community looking for theoretical orientation. Ferlenga compared the text to one of those “unfinished works” that Rossi continuously re-worked: a sketch, a plan, a building.

Many presentations emphasised the importance of Ernesto Rogers and Casabella had on Rossi. Serena Maffioletti, and others, said that the journal was the first to publish Rossi’s writings and was among the first to publish his designs. The individual writings for Casabella were thus the route towards The Architecture of the City. The book, then is a collage. Diego Seixas Lopes considered the fragmentary nature of The Architecture of the City to be a collage-like construction. He noted that the wide range of sources from disparate fields intertwined with mentions to Milizia (Enlightenment architecture), Poete (French geography), de Saussure (linguistics) and memories of cities walked by Rossi. Showing preliminary photographs of the making of the book, it looks similar to the way Rossi makes the Blue Notebooks. Freehand writing, with sketch drawings and photocopies of “things” pasted together.

The Verbal and Non Verbal”]

Rossi A (1966) My own copy of the 1982 The Architecture of the City and McEwan C (2011) Rossi's Modena Cemetery [Photomontage

 

I learned via Elisabetta Vasumi Roveri that the alternative title of The Architecture of the City was to be The City Planning Manual. Uncannily timely, my own contribution noted the alternative title of Rossi’s second book A Scientific Autobiography was to be Forgetting Architecture. I used the article by Adam Caruso titled Whatever Happened to Analogue Architecture and published in AA Files 2009 as my starting point to investigate a lineage of Analogue Architecture from Aldo Rossi to the contemporary Swiss architects Christian Kerez and Valerio Olgiati. I outlined the article by Caruso, who offered a concise section on Aldo Rossi’s two tenure’s at ETH Zurich in the 1970s (Kerez and Olgiati are one step removed from being students of Rossi), and then considered the opposition offered by Carl Jung to Sigmund Freud on analogical thinking. Jung said that analogical thinking was both verbal and non verbal, which invites speculation on the relationship between writing and built form. I suggested the image mediates. Similarly when we speculate on Rossi’s alternative title, Forgetting Architecture, the opposite of forgetting is remembering; and via Freud it is mis-remembering that mediates. Equating these two mediating principles, I offered an analogical reading of Kerez and Olgiati, and suggested thus the contemporary state of Analogue Architecture. A controversial implication. The title of my own contribution was rather cheekily Whatever Happened to Analogue Architecture? Perhaps I should drop Caruso an email…

and Caruso A (2009) Whatever Happened to Analogue Architecture [article title] Mis-remembering the Image. Somewhere between the verbal and non verbal”]

Rossi A (1989) Untitled [painting

 

Now for the exhibition. The publishing history of The Architecture of the City was presented as original books, artefacts; around which, a timeline according to Rossi’s Blue Notebooks was charted. Extracts of which were scattered as loose fragments. A little bit lost looking.

“]

Aldo Rossi Extracts from the Blue Notebooks at The Architecture of the City After 45 Years IUAV Venice [photograph by McEwan c (2011)

 

The publishing history reads: Italy 1966, Spain 1971, Germany 1973, Portugal 1977, Italy 1978, France 1981, Spain 1982, USA 1982, Greece 1987, Japan 1991, China 1992 (2 of), Brazil 1995, Italy 1995, Portugal 2001, Italy 2006, and the new 2011 Italy Edition. It is interesting to note the front covers. For example, the first edition of Italy 1966 superimposes a Renaissance Ideal City over an aerial landscape; Italy 1978 shows the Mausoleum of Hadrian (later transformed into the Castel Sant’Angelo). While France 1981 the Analogical City appears five years after it was first presented, then Japan 1991 the Mausoleum again after it was used by Eisenman in the 1982 USA introduction where he juxtaposed a drawing of a labyrinth, setting up ideas about journey and transformation. The China 1992 shows the Analogical City for the second time. The new Edition for 2011 is from an ArtForum article titled Fragments and depicts a storyboard dated 1987 New York.

And those enigmatic Blue Notebooks. Text-based notes, diagrams of objects and projects, self portrait sketch studies, fragments of train tickets, photocopies of newspapers and photographs of views are pasted within. Indeed, I took pleasure in finding out that the Notebooks measure 220mm by 175, when laid flat.

These are just a few highlights in a short Blog Post. The conference was dense with knowledge, intensely focused and in true Rossian style, it was both lucid and murkily ambiguous. I am grateful for the opportunity to share such a platform and thank those who selected my proposal. Indeed, especially to Eamonn Canniffe who forwarded me the Call for Papers and Graeme Hutton for allowing me the short leave. My only criticism is that there was very little questioning of Rossi in general, and considerably less questioning directed at the speakers, in particular. Perhaps this is okay but resistance is welcome, and criticism directed at the individual research presentations should have been encouraged.

The City That Thinks; A Walk on the Digital Sublime

“]

McEwan (2011) Exhibition views of Paul Guzzardo City That Thinks [photograph

 

Two views of the Exhibition “City That Thinks” by Paul Guzzardo, a media artist and attorney based in St. Louis and Buenos Aires.

Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art until November 11

 

To walk on the digital sublime  click here…

 

The City is like a large House

and Study of Tenement Housing Type Perth [CAD plan section elevation]“]

McEwan C (2011) Tenement Housing Type Perth [Photomontage

Ordinary housing largely forms what we call the built environment, the city. Italian architect Aldo Rossi said that the city is built around fixed points, “monuments.” These are large collective elements surrounded by ordinary housing. In the 1966 The Architecture of the City Rossi developed a theoretical framework for the typology of buildings and their relationship to the city writing, “the study of the individual dwelling offers one of the best means of studying the city and vice versa.” The dwelling is thus both individual and collective. It refers to both itself; and analogically to the wider city, like Alberti’s analogy.

 

This article was first published in the Brick issue of Mat.zine edited by Ryan McLoughlin.

 

The Serpentine Pavilion: Zumthor’s Box from Bengal

Vertical articulation of hessian fabric and detail”]

McEwan C (2011) Zumthor Serpentine Pavilion [Photograph

An austere Swiss agricultural shed has been transposed to the centre of Hyde Park, London. Last week I had the pleasure of meeting the Project Context team in this most modest of objects. This year’s 11^th Serpentine Pavilion is by architect Peter Zumthor, a timber framed structure wrapped in a hessian fabric and coated in idendenpaint. The fabric is rolled over a plywood surface with thin overlaps that create a vertical articulation. It is rough to touch and my sudden association with this jute thread is now to Bengal and even Dundee…

The linear courtyard plan is skewed from the Serpentine Gallery and reads as a sequence of rectangles, one inside another. With openings shifted horizontally one sidesteps from exposed park-to-path-to-dark corridor-to-enclosed garden, the hortus conclusus by Dutch designer Piet Oudolf. A stained blue ledge surrounds the garden and as one looks up, the extreme pitch of the roof frames both the sky and the immediate foliage.

“]

McEwan, C (2011) Sketch Study of Zumthor, P (2011) Serpentine Pavilion [notebook extract

With a clear set of oppositions: solid to void, enclosure and exposure, dark to light, solid and unsolid, Zumthor’s black box is an elegant alternative to the busy compositions of previous Serpentine Pavilion’s.

The role of the Serpentine Pavilion has been to offer architects who have not built in the UK a commission to design the temporary structure in Hyde Park and sited on the Gallery’s lawn for the summer months. Zaha Hadid built one in 2000, Oscar Niemeyer in 2003 and Rem Koolhaas in 2006. However with Frank Gehry having built a Maggies Centre in Dundee before the Serpentine, and Zumthor’s house in Devon for Living Architecture underway, perhaps the Serpentine brief requires a further subtle modification.

Route to enclosed garden and view of enclosed garden”]

McEwan C (2011) Zumthor Serpentine Pavilion [Photograph

Demolition of Hilltown Tower Blocks

“]

McEwan C (2011) Demolition of Four Hilltown Tower Blocks Detail [Photograph

In 2002, two 15-storey tower blocks were demolished in Lochee, Dundee. In 2006, four 17-storey blocks were demolished in Ardler. Yesterday, a further four 22-storey blocks were demolished in Hilltown. Such slabs sit in parallel rows, located in an expanse of concrete, often perceived as monuments to social discontent.

What now for this particular brownfield site in Hilltown, an edge of city centre location? High density housing that reinforces the street, includes shops and community facilities, in opposition to the vertical slabs that do little or nothing for street continuity? No, from one form of social discontent to another, plans are underway for low density, single family homes. The kind that also do little for street continuity and serve only to intensify the sprawl of the city.

“]

McEwan C (2011) Demolition of Four Hilltown Tower Blocks [Sequence of five photographs

A Contextual Design and The Double?

Pencil sketch plans, Street elevation and photograph of scale model”]

McEwan, C (2011) The Architecture of Analogy A Contextual Design and The Double [Digital montage

The film maker Sergei Eisenstein proposed that with the method of montage “any two sequences, when juxtaposed, inevitably combine into another concept which arises from that juxtaposition as something qualitatively new” (Eisenstein, 1938). Montage is a visual technique that superimposes images (and/or text) or places images (and/or text) adjacently in order to produce an impression, illustrate an association of ideas, or analyse by comparison.

At a recent presentation on “Urban Aesthetics” in Dresden, Germany I was asked, in relation to my “contextual” design for a city centre site in Dundee, Scotland: “What do you think about “cut and paste?” Before proceeding with the reply, it is worth outlining the project. The brief proposes a building or buildings that interface with the city, the programme of which is defined by the current Local Development Plan and supplemented by the addition of an Education and Research facility. The design proposes two urban blocks to either side of an existing building. One block investigates a regular courtyard plan; the other is informed by the irregular plan of the adjacent context: the footprint of a neighbouring block is rotated, pasted to the site, re-aligned with the street and cut to fit. The elevational treatment proceeds in a similar way. The existing street elevation is drawn and the relationship of solid to void is noted. The proposition is wrapped by a series of these drawings, cut and altered as the programme necessitates. It is the “double” of the neighbouring block.

My reply to the initial question: “‘Cut and paste’ is similar to the way in which film from the 1920’s uses montage. New ideas emerge through the juxtaposition of images. In urban design, a ‘modification’ takes place in-between the ‘cut’ and the ‘paste.’ The modification is something new. It is placed in a context, which is readjusted by it, to read as something new.” In the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges, The Double is our opposite. A shadow. “Analogy” is a process of reasoning that uses existing material as reference in order to construct something new. The design project shares an analogical relationship with both the context and its shadow.

This article was first published in the “Cut Paste” issue of Mat.zine, edited by Stephen Mackie.

After Architect Aldo Rossi: The Spider’s Web of Milan and Rossi’s Duality of Extremes at Segrate and Gallaratese

1801 Plan of Milan from- Aldo Rossi (1966) The Architecture of the City

 

Embellished with patches of public parks, the remains of the city gate and a couple of canals, Milan is a dense tangle of streets in the pattern of a web. Rossi’s monument in Segrate is located at the southeast end of the red metro thread. At the other, is his unité d’habitation of Gallaratese located in a northwest suburb. At Milan’s centre is the vertically articulated Duomo, from which one can access the roof and survey those tangled streets. The vast rectangular open space defined by the Duomo leeks into the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a thirty metre high vaulted street designed by Giuseppe Mengoni c1870, and connects to a smaller open space just north. The sequence of spaces is quite lovely.

 

“]

McEwan C (2011) Milano Duomo and Mengoni's Galleria Photomontage [Photographs on paper

 

Rossi conjures a romantic vision for the Gallaratese housing writing that the open corridor “signifies a life-style bathed in everyday occurrences, domestic intimacy, and varied personal relationships.” One component of architectural meaning is “association” and as such Rossi’s corridor not only suggests the potential for a romantic chat with ones neighbour, but also signifies the repetitive element of open-sided tunnels, and perhaps a reference to the prison. Rossi, the once agent provocateurof Italian architecture was always aware of such dualities. In the June 24 postI wrote of the cold and controlled San Cataldo cemetery, the route suggestive of some “final solution.” Indeed, Rossi writes of the relationship between construction and destruction as complimentary aspects of his design process.

 

“]

McEwan C (2011) Aldo Rossi Gallaratese Open Corridors and Prison [Photograph

 

Composed of a series of simple forms balancing upon one another, the 1965 Monument to the Partisans of World War II, at Segrate is an early demonstration of Rossi’s duality of extremes: it is a monument to the dead; the fountain is a symbol that celebrates life.  On my visit, a hot summer day, the tray where the water collects, was eerily dry. Formally, the monument is a coffin, on top of which is an extruded triangle balanced upon a single cylindrical column. The triangle signifies the pitch of a primitive hut, a life-giving archetype of building.

 

“]

McEwan C (2011) Aldo Rossi Monument at Segrate Photomontage [Photographs on paper

 

Destruct the monument and transpose the individual elements to Gallaratese and one can read Rossi’s reflective process of construct; destruct; transpose. Like Le Corbusier’s unité, Gallaratese is a slab that contains houses perched above a colonnade. The first floor links to the housing designed by Carlo Aymonino by a bridge on one side and a large open space on the other. Between this are a series of shop units, on my visit all of which were empty. Around one third of the way along the slab, an incision breaks the housing in two and is defined by four large cylindrical columns.

 

“]

McEwan C (2011) Aldo Rossi Gallaratese Photomontage [Photographs on paper

 

The After Architect Aldo Rossi foray to Italy has been an informative incursion into the built projects of Aldo Rossi and a thoroughly enlightening experience to tour some of his most cited references: retreating into the Sant’Andrea vaulted space, interrogating Canaletto’s Venice and climbing into the head of Rossi’s Saint have all been pleasurable. Viewing the modification of form and scale from project to project, it is fascinating to note the formal and theoretical relationships that exist between Rossi’s built works and their written/drawn counterparts. However, I am still trying to work out which is the analogue: the built work, the drawn study, or the written narrative.

Cameron McEwan July 2011

After Architect Aldo Rossi: The Hand of San Carlone and the Theatre’s of Life at Fagnano Alona and Broni

“]

McEwan C (2011) Inside the Head of San Carlone at Arona [Photograph

 

Mounting the stair of the plinth, the pilgrim enters the body of the saint. After ascending the interior of the body, one arrives at the head and peers through the eyes of San Carlone toward the grey lakes of Maggiore. Two Regionale trains and a wet walk from Milano Centrale, it takes a little under two hours to reach the location of Rossi’s drawn, re-drawn and drawn again hand of San Carlone at Arona. Architect Cerano designed the 35 metre high iron structure, enclosed in folded copper that one can climb by hooking into a harness and reaching toward the heavens by ladder.

 

“]

McEwan, C (2011) San Carlone at Arona Photomontage and Sketch Study [Photographs on cartridge paper; Pencil on layout paper

 

A detour home via Sunday bus service and a further one and a half hour stroll, I received a pleasant welcome from a teacher named Virginia Mont who guided me around Rossi’s elementary school in Fagnano Olona. The school is organised around a central courtyard with steps that lead to the double height gymnasium. Like in the preliminary studies for San Cataldo Cemetery, Modena (both designs of the 1970s), a skeletol plan form emerges, with classrooms arranged linearly along the legs. One enters at the head of this skeletol creature, underneath a clock and adjacent chimney, and proceeds to the circular, meeting space, which unfortunately is now showing signs of water penetration. The elevation is punctured with large square openings set in line with the internal wall thus articulating the shadow that falls on the external surface.

 

“]

McEwan, C (2011) Aldo Rossi School at Fagnano Olona Photomontage and Sketch Study [Photographs on cartridge paper; Pencil on layout paper

 

The intermediate school in Broni, south of Milan, further interrogates the courtyard as an organisational device. Now, a single storey encloses an hexagonal meeting space. A halt in the enclosing wall of classrooms allows views toward the housing that surround the school. As with Fagnano Olona, Rossi sets the square window frames flush with the inside. Shadow again allowing one to visualise the passing of time.

 

“]

McEwan, C (2011) Aldo Rossi School at Broni Photomontage and Sketch Study [Photographs on cartridge paper; Pencil on layout paper

 

Ben Huser recently posted an homage to Aldo Rossi in which Huser included some of his beautiful photographs of the floating Teatro del Mondo. To make a comparison, the central hexagonal space of Broni is reconfigured within Rossi’s sketch studies for his floating pavilion at the 1980 Venice Biennale: with only a slight modification, a theatre of life becomes a theatre of the world. A similar comparison can be made with the San Cataldo Cemetery and Fagnano Olona School which merge into one another: one a theatre for the dead, the other a play of life.