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Architecture in the City - In The Room We Begin

"Architecture in the City" is a module component accompanying the direct Master (MA) route in Advanced Architectural Design (AAD) at the Oxford Brookes School of Architecture led by course lead Joel Chappell and Louise Cann.

Here is the summary of interests, research and work of the module during the academic year 2018-2019.

How do we experience our city?
How do we experience our street?
How do we experience our house?
How do we experience our room?
What is our habitat?

Our room is where we start, where we begin.


Through collage, collision, digital manipulation and production, students individually designed and constructed a furniture fragment. A glimpse. A blink of the eye moment that seeks to describe what is beyond, in the black, in the darkened room. This room was designed collectively by all students participating.

Externally the natural world is imagined as threatening, not beautiful and calm. In this way it is more realistic. It imagines the universe as dark, as black, as a void - which it is. Within the dark there are only points of light.

In this way it runs counter to Modernism.

It provides an answer to the concerns of sustainability in that it imagines a world requiring little or no energy. What energy is required for light is minimal, particular, and directed. Since light is limited, surface, texture, and detail are paramount.

Taking these principles and ideas this programme demands not a reimagining of Modernism but a search for something entirely different. Individual project work develops through group exercises, with workshops that seek to reconfigure and collide previous work. It was essential that every student attends each session and is on time with the required work. Much of the work for this module is developed and progressed ‘live’ in the School of Architecture university room AB405.

Final fragments are 3D printed and no bigger than 200mm x 200mm x 250mm.

The room is described through a series of designed and styled photographs.

Process Photography
Louise Cann ~ CANN Design ©

The Process

Step 1;
Understanding room and furniture through collage making.

Step 2 + 3;
Drawings are produced from collaged surface details and laser cutting them onto polypropylene to form 3D models. Each polypropylene model is spray painted in preparation for the next stage - 3D scanning.

Step 4 + 5;
The polypropylene models are digitally scanned and are manipulated in 3D computer software to form new objects. The new objects are reviewed and potential functions are reinterpretted back into the original room and furniture collages.

Step 6;
New objects and fragements are tested through the means of 3D printing. Some experiments fail resulting in the object to be remodelled or regenerated in the computer. Structural material left from the 3D printing methods requestion the premise of our objects and fragments. Some printing is stopped part way through so we can analyse the objects physically in sections. Different materials are used to print.

Step 7;
The printed objects and fragements are tested through photography where students learn to design, style and light their shoots to reveal their chosen narratives. Elements of the body are included for scale. Workshops are given to address the technical aspects of the camera as a tool for capture. The photography is crtiqued and reworked to obtain each students final image and an understanding of the over arching idea for the room.

The Final Photographs

The photographs act as a collection and should be read together to understand the room as a whole. They focus on entering and engaging in parts of the room to collate moments of function and purpose - a narrative between aesthetic and use.

Surfaces of the room extrude and form around the body, illuminating specific parts for recognition and placement. Some of the surfaces are fluted, enabling the occupier to talk into the light providing vessels for sound and voice recognition as part of the rooms interactive smart technology. This activates moving air for the drying of hair.

The surfaces within the room also form holders for objects and appliances required for a cosmetic transformation - the hair, the make-up and the clothing.

There is a place to rest each foot whilst the natural moonlight penetrates the room illuminating the toe nails for the application red polish. This gives us the first sense of what might be happening beyond the room and the time of day we are present in.

As the ritual of the transformation occurs, the person occupying the room becomes almost unrecognisable to the person that entered. They become gender neutral, almost robotic. The moulded surfaces now illuminate parts of the face for the application of make-up - the final phase of the rooms transformative occupation. The directed red light tells the occupier the order, colour and placement of make-up required. This allows the room to act as a controlled mediator between the occupier and the transformative action for anyone that enters.

Final Photography
Dhruvit Dholakia © | Masara Akkad © | Daniella Clark © | Evelin Santoso Khalim © | Camille Estephan © | Namratha Mohan ©

Permission granted to reproduce for personal and educational uses only. Commercial copying, hiring, lending of this content is prohibited. All student materials appearing on this website are the property of the student. No use may be made of such materials without the student's personal consent.

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