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51% shortlisted as AA Masterplan Architect

51% stu­dios has this week been short­listed with four other firms for the role of mas­ter­plan archi­tect for the Archi­tec­tural Asso­ci­a­tion, which has recently aquired the leases of a num­ber Grade 1 listed build­ings in Bed­ford Square in addi­tion to those already held for the his­toric build­ings at 34–36.

Oth­ers on the short­list are Don­ald Insall Asso­ciates, Richard Grif­fiths Archi­tects, With­er­ford Wat­son Mann and Wright & Wright.

 

March 23, 2010 | Filed Under Architecture | Comments Off 

Social Cinema

Frieze Mag­a­zine asked crit­ics and cura­tors from around the world to choose what, and who, they felt to be the most sig­nif­i­cant shows and artists of 2006: Alex Far­quhar­son wrote: “‘Social Cin­ema’ was as mem­o­rable as it was fugi­tive. Over three evenings they cre­ated out­door cin­e­mas that made for deli­cious jux­ta­po­si­tions between Lon­don land­marks – Berthold Lubetkin’s Fins­bury Health Cen­tre and Nor­man Foster’s Mil­len­nium Bridge – and films related to Mod­ernist think­ing on archi­tec­ture, urban­ism and social progress in post­war Britain.”

In 2006, as part of the Lon­don Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale, we col­lab­o­rated with artists Neil Cum­mings and Marysia Lewandowska on Social Cin­ema: a project con­sist­ing of a series of tem­po­rary cin­e­mas, each installed for one night only into the exist­ing urban fab­ric of the Bien­nale des­ig­nated route between Exmouth Mar­ket and the Mil­len­nium Bridge.

Films about, set in, or com­ment­ing on Lon­don and its archi­tec­ture were stun­ningly pro­jected upon the city itself.  At each loca­tion, build­ings became screens, steps seat­ing, and own­ers of nearby build­ings gen­er­ously gave power, or loaned their houses as pro­jec­tion booths. The archi­tec­tural fab­ric of the tem­po­rary cin­e­mas was impro­vi­sory, play­ful and sub­tle; pal­lets ‘bor­rowed’ from a Smith­field Mar­ket made tem­po­rary bleach­ers, plas­tic crates from local pubs and restau­rants became seat­ing, neigh­bours joined the audi­ence, and vol­un­teers with torches acted as ushers.

Social Cin­ema turned un-built spaces into audi­to­ria and spec­tac­u­larly inter­vened in neglected places around land­mark build­ings. The film pro­gramme of the Social Cin­ema traced an evo­lu­tion in the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of every­day life. Each pro­gram began by intro­duc­ing ideas and obser­va­tions on Lon­don and its build­ings with excerpts from lec­tures in the Archi­tec­tural Asso­ci­a­tion Film Archive, includ­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the archi­tects Cedric Price, Denys Las­dun, Reyner Ban­ham, and Ron Her­ron; and then looped back to the 1960’s show­ing some mag­nif­i­cent films from the Free Cin­ema move­ment, of every­day work­ing class expe­ri­ence. Free Cin­ema was fol­lowed by a selec­tion of extra­or­di­nary ama­teur films from Straight 8 and these segued into short films pre­vi­ously uploaded onto inter­net sites where skate­board­ers, shop­pers, and tourists record their inter­ac­tions with the archi­tec­ture of the city.

To see more about each loca­tion, have a look at the port­fo­lio page here. Detailed film list­ings are on the artists’ web­site: Chan­ce­pro­jects and at the Pho­tog­ra­phers’ Gallery

None of this pos­si­ble with­out Sam Collins or James Ling­wood. Thanks also to Mal­colm at XL video and Simon Fryer at Cover-it-up.

April 16, 2009 | Filed Under Art | Comments Off 

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