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Description
Program Panel

The project is an ornamental re-configuration of the late18th-century home of the Architectural Association on London's Bedford Square.

The Programatic Panel

This begins to locate ornament within the building as a whole. Traditionally ornament is located between joint, and this is translated to the larger scale of the building where programs collide creating potential areas or ornamental intervention.

Project Overview

The project is an ornamental re-configuration of the late18th-century home of the Architectural Association on London's Bedford Square.

The idea is to bring fun playfulness and pleasure back to architecture through accelerating intricacy, creating a visual dialogue with the user.

The project uses the curvaceous dynamics, trajectories and metamorphoses of the Rococo Geometries to transform architectural elements. These transformations occur at specific places within the building where ornament would traditionally occur, the joints; windows, doors, internal partitions etc. Once these moments occur the ornament begins to liberate themselves from the elements of structure and begin to invade the space itself. In doing so they dissolve transitions between disparate architectural elements, framing spaces, creating areas of interaction between users, or users and the building.

The ornament acts as the connective device within the building. Connecting the context, history of the AA, interaction within the building, materiality and structure together. It creates continuity without homegenity. The detail reflects the whole, which reflects the context and so on.

Mixed with the Rococo trajectories is the idea of Chinese Whispers. As architectural elements progress along trajectories, their properties – that is their meanings, functions, materiality's, aesthetics and so on – their messages, change, leaving them in a state of constant perpetuity, an in-between state that is always more interesting than a static condition. They becoming increasingly intertwined with each other. But the whispers don’t just take on any form or shape – there is always a lineage from the initial phases right through to the end; a pathway that can be followed and explored, like the passage through a labyrinth.

Yet the entire building is not ornamental. The areas of intense ornamental intricacy are concentrated to differentiate elements of importance within the building. Either to frame spaces, create navigational paths through the building or programmatic identity within certain areas. The ornamentation occurs in various scales; it manifests in the curvature of a structural concrete wall as well as in the minute engravings of the glazing. It oscillates between surface pattern and sculptural object.

Sitting next to it's Neoclassical neighbours, the AA needs a re-invention that pulls it apart from it's context but simultaneously keeps it entirely connected with it through the gradual metamorphosis. Just as in a Rococo cartouche, which dissolves the transition between reality and picture, the New AA frames the conceptual experiments occurring within with the reality of the outside, creating a seamless transition between the two.

-Alex

www.alextheartist.com

Description
Program Panel

The project is an ornamental re-configuration of the late18th-century home of the Architectural Association on London's Bedford Square.

The Programatic Panel

This begins to locate ornament within the building as a whole. Traditionally ornament is located between joint, and this is translated to the larger scale of the building where programs collide creating potential areas or ornamental intervention.

Project Overview

The project is an ornamental re-configuration of the late18th-century home of the Architectural Association on London's Bedford Square.

The idea is to bring fun playfulness and pleasure back to architecture through accelerating intricacy, creating a visual dialogue with the user.

The project uses the curvaceous dynamics, trajectories and metamorphoses of the Rococo Geometries to transform architectural elements. These transformations occur at specific places within the building where ornament would traditionally occur, the joints; windows, doors, internal partitions etc. Once these moments occur the ornament begins to liberate themselves from the elements of structure and begin to invade the space itself. In doing so they dissolve transitions between disparate architectural elements, framing spaces, creating areas of interaction between users, or users and the building.

The ornament acts as the connective device within the building. Connecting the context, history of the AA, interaction within the building, materiality and structure together. It creates continuity without homegenity. The detail reflects the whole, which reflects the context and so on.

Mixed with the Rococo trajectories is the idea of Chinese Whispers. As architectural elements progress along trajectories, their properties – that is their meanings, functions, materiality's, aesthetics and so on – their messages, change, leaving them in a state of constant perpetuity, an in-between state that is always more interesting than a static condition. They becoming increasingly intertwined with each other. But the whispers don’t just take on any form or shape – there is always a lineage from the initial phases right through to the end; a pathway that can be followed and explored, like the passage through a labyrinth.

Yet the entire building is not ornamental. The areas of intense ornamental intricacy are concentrated to differentiate elements of importance within the building. Either to frame spaces, create navigational paths through the building or programmatic identity within certain areas. The ornamentation occurs in various scales; it manifests in the curvature of a structural concrete wall as well as in the minute engravings of the glazing. It oscillates between surface pattern and sculptural object.

Sitting next to it's Neoclassical neighbours, the AA needs a re-invention that pulls it apart from it's context but simultaneously keeps it entirely connected with it through the gradual metamorphosis. Just as in a Rococo cartouche, which dissolves the transition between reality and picture, the New AA frames the conceptual experiments occurring within with the reality of the outside, creating a seamless transition between the two.

-Alex

www.alextheartist.com