Dip 7

Who Said Drawing Should Be Like Watching TV?

Everything We Don’t Know … Zone 7, Series #1

who what where when why how who what where when why how who 

12 students plus four tutors with a combined age of 586 years and 20 guests spent 12 weeks searching the potential of using film-as-sketchbook and another 21 weeks developing moving drawings to explore Speed, Time and Interval as a relevant definition of architecture for the twenty-first century, 

and with an invitation to design a response to the following provocation: 

The architecture of the New Nature evolves from a culture whose dominant raw materials exist outside the visible spectrum: digital anthropology meets the sublime anthropocene. What might this mean in the context of two airstrip locations less than one hour from the AA: 

a) a 700-home development proposed for the currently operational Panshanger Flying School on the edge of Welwyn Garden City 

b) a VIP departure lounge at RAF Northholt in Middlesex? 

Particular attention was paid to points of arrival and departure: house as port – port as house – port as park – park as port – park as house. Repton, Howard, Olmsted, Price, McLean, Tschumi, Broadbent, Macfadyen, Sobek have all worked or continue to work in the field. They are the antennae of our enlightenment. One design question elicits another, and another and another. Only one thing remains certain, and that is the importance of keeping a record of unknowns. The list below shows the most recent unknowns offered by each student at the time of going to press.

What if flux means architecture?
What is the architecture of absence?
What does it mean to exist weightlessly?
What if the city comes to you?
What is an ecotone?
What is a crowd settlement?
What is suburban mining – is it a wonderland or a treacherous image?
What is a field of departures and arrivals?
What is an aerovecus landscape?
What is a nomadic suburban stretch?
What is a year of water without the Cocteau twins?
What can a quantum house be?