Concrete Geometries: How Spaces Move People

- 6 - 27 May 2011, AA School, 36 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3ES -
- Press Preview 6 May 10am -
- FREE exhibition and public events -
- New relationships between people and built space -
- AA School research programmes aim to challenge architects to change their approach -
- 20 ground-breaking international projects by artists, architects and designers -

19 April 2011: A corridor so narrow that strangers brush shoulders; a platform through a densely inhabited house which challenges the relationship between inhabitant and visitor; and a room reshaped through a graphic pattern are just three of the 20 projects on show as part of Concrete Geometries, a new exhibition at the ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE from 6 - 27 May 2011. The exhibition is the culmination of the latest of the AA School's Research Clusters Programmes - 18-month long research projects which brings together AA staff, students and outside partners.

PRESS PREVIEW: 6 May 2011 at 10am with exhibition directors Marianne Mueller and Olaf Kneer.
RSVP Susannah Glynn (susannah.glynn@kallaway.com) or 020 72217883.

The research programme and the exhibition have focused on the relationship between people and built spaces using recent international design, architecture and art projects as case studies. The aim is to change architects' attitudes towards space, which is too often created out of technological convenience rather than how people interact with their environment in real life.

Marianne Mueller, Co-Director of the cluster and Diploma Unit Master at the AA School, said: "The aim of Concrete Geometries, part of the AA School Research Cluster Programmes, is to transform how architects think about the creation of space and how it is used for everyday life. This topic seems quite an obvious thing to be exploring, but it is not a discussion that is being held in architecture today. By involving designers and artists we are able to rethink our practice on the creation of space. Digital design has provided architects with new tools to experiment with the use of space. We need to challenges our current thinking of space and how we as architects create it."

The research programme, Concrete Geometries, began in January 2010 with an international call for submissions exploring how geometric aspects of space, such as size, shape or relative position of figures, are perceived and influence behavior in a very real sense. 415 entries were received from artists, architects and designers around the world, of which over 30 were chosen for further research. 20 of these projects have been selected for the exhibition, including:

• Room Drawing Installation, by German artist Christine Rusche: transforming the perceived space of a room using graphic patterns on its walls
  
  
• Connecting Corridor, by Dutch designers Studio Elmo Vermijs: an installation connecting two buildings which is too narrow to allow two people to pass, forcing its users to interact with strangers
  
  
• Brunnenstrasse 9, by German architects Brandlhuber + ERA: a building which is inspired - rather than constrained - by the legal space guidelines governing the site
  
  
• House Installation Project, by British artist Fran Cottell: an installation in an existing domestic setting, where a raised platform acts as a walkway for visitors, bringing into play conflicting and contradictory power relations. The installation serves as a social experiment to see which prevails - visitor or intruder
  
  
• Dymaxion Sleep, by Canadian architects/artists Jane Hutton and Adrian Blackwell, Canada: a structure of nets suspended over a garden which changes the viewer's fundamental spatial relationship to plants.

The exhibition will also contain a site-specific installation consisting of a raised platform around the room and central mirrored table, which has been developed in collaboration with British artist Fran Cottell (of the House Installation Project). The installation will transform the exhibition space into a room that can be used for debate as well as informally by AA students.

- ENDS -

PRESS PREVIEW
10am, 6 May 2010, with exhibition directors Marianne Mueller and Olaf Kneer.
RSVP susannah.glynn@kallaway.com or 020 7221 7883

FURTHER INFORMATION & PICTURES
Susannah Glynn, email: susannah.glynn@kallaway.com Tel: 020 7221 7883
For high res images of Concrete Geometries projects see:
http://mediacentre.kallaway.co.uk/architectural-association-school-picture-library16.asp

About Concrete Geometries and the exhibition
Concrete Geometries(www.concrete-geometries.net) is directed by Marianne Mueller and Olaf Kneer, directors of Mueller Kneer Associates, and Diploma Unit Masters at the AA School. Since 2009 they have also been Programme Directors of AA Berlin Laboratory. The name is derived from the synthesis of 'concrete', registering an existing reality or actual experience, and the abbreviation 'geometries', denoting spatial form.

The exhibition will feature photographs and scale models of projects exploring built space and human processes, both aesthetic and social, and an installation by British artist Fran Cottell. The show follows a symposium held at the end of 2010 which brought together 22 international artists and architects to discuss the potential of spatial form as a socially engaged and relevant tool. A publication documenting the work of the cluster is due to be published in the Summer term of 2011.

AA Research Clusters
AA Research Clusters are Programmes of 18 month-long special projects, activities and events that bring together diverse groups of AA staff, students and outside partners for the purpose of realising a body of focussed research. Operating in part as 'vertical units', they are intended as platforms through which to consolidate expertise within the school, exploring and enhancing existing and new territories and modes of research, and to challenge existing forms of research and presentation. These methods have been in the form of events, symposia, conferences, workshops, performances, publications, off- or on-site exhibitions, fabrications and inter-disciplinary collaborative research and competitions. By bringing together art, architecture, design and humanities, the ultimate goal of the Programmes is to provide inspiration for new approaches to architecture and design.

The AA School (www.aaschool.ac.uk)
The ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE is the world's most renowned international and influential school of architecture. Since 1847 it has pioneered a belief in architecture as profession, culture and form of human enquiry and is credited with fostering the creation of worldwide leaders of architecture. AA School alumni include architectural leaders Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Lord Rogers, Will Alsop and many others.

Through its unique, year-long, unit based system of teaching, direct intervention in cities and its intensively collaborative team based approach to learning, the school brings together disconnected worlds, fresh ideas and inspiring insights. The AA School is celebrated worldwide as an imaginative setting for architectural culture.

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