Transformations in Architecture

Unit 8: Lightness and Weight

London Metropolitan: Diploma Unit 8’s Transcription Project 2020

Tutors: Takero Shimazaki, Paolo Emilio Pisano and Karabo Turner

BOTB The subject of re-use, transformation and working with existing built fabric has been an increasingly urgent topic for UK architects and this has been reflected in the fact that, within architecture schools, an increasing number of units have been focusing their work in this direction. Having featured the work of Diploma Unit 8 from London Metropolitan last year we thought we would revisit the unit’s work and share one of their projects from this year. Entitled “Transcription” this project saw the students working from the close observation of Belgian architectural precedents and then transcribing key elements of these projects into their London thesis sites.

Working ‘in the style of’ an other architect, learning from different generations of architects, transplanting elements of one project to a different site, with a different programme, and taking on collaborative projects with different schools must have challenged these students. One can imagine that fluency in this way of working will serve these future architects well.

Unit Text: Prior to a studio trip to Ghent, Belgium, the Unit worked in pairs to study a built reference by a Belgian architect. Studies included works by Juliaan Lampens, Jacques Dupuis, Rene Heyvaert, and Jos Vandriessche. Through drawing, models, and photography, these studies attempted to distil the essence of the original project - the moments and gestures within the Belgian architecture that can be considered irreducible.

These fragments were subsequently transcribed, plucked from their original context and placed onto a new social and spatial context in Battersea, the site of the student’s Thesis projects that year. A 1:20 ‘corner model’, which extracts a specific spatial relationship found in the Belgian project, is inserted into a Battersea site model. Tensions between site and reference - created by the Transcription - are then interrogated through model-making and drawing.

Crucially, while the reference buildings were almost entirely domestic in scale and character, the Transcription process manipulated their architecture for a contrasting public use in Battersea.

The Transcription project culminated with ‘Re-Practice, Re-Visit, Re-Turn’ - an exhibition in February 2020 at deSingel, Antwerp. The exhibition was made possible through collaboration between Unit 8, Architecten Jan de Vylder Inge Vinck, the Flanders Architecture Institute, and Philip Christou. The Unit drew on the creative energy of our many collaborators to produce a series of ‘Project 4’ hand-drawings, celebrating the reference buildings and the Transcription process.

Click on the images to visit the project pages.