Architectural Association Experimental 12 - Extended Brief Transnational Architecture 2020/2021
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Architectural Association Experimental 12 - Extended Brief Transnational Architecture 2020/2021
Architectural Association
Experimental 12
Photographs by Martin Parr: Egypt Giza - The Phinx, 1992 and The Luxor Hotel and Casino Las Vegas, 1994
Transnational Architecture
Architectural Association
Experimental 12
“There have long been cross-border economic processes – flows of capital,
labor, goods, raw materials, tourists. But to a large extent these took place
within the inter-state system, where the key articulators were national states.
This has changed rather dramatically over the last decade…”
The Global City: Introducing a Concept, Saskia Sassen, 2005
Now 15 years later, as governments around the world are reinforcing national
structures of control, the most pressing forces of the human condition today
– pandemics, climate change and inequality – indisputably can neither be
framed as isolated problems relating solely to local territories.
The effects of urban densification, climate crisis, omnipresent online communi-
cation, growing economic instability are leaving us with a strange global soup
which at first is difficult to grasp. Koolhaas refers to a concept of Junkspace,
the human debris of modernity that has littered the planet. “Junkspace pre-
tends to unite, but it actually splinters. It creates communities not out of shared
interest or free association, but out of identical statistics and unavoidable
demographics, an opportunistic weave of vested interests.”
These spaces are something we experience every day, but yet they stay un-
distinguishable as they are so embedded in our everyday life. They represent
a design problem so vast, that it is difficult to be critical of it. Whenever you try
“Traditional” Starbucks Kyoto Ninei-zaka Yasaka Chayate, CNN, 2017
to approach towards it, it disappears and appears again elsewhere. This junk
is consumed globally: energy, information, culture, food, goods and capital are
all continuously being transported via air, land and sea.
In a new normal context, architecture provides physical protection, while it is
coupled with digital technology to provide social interaction. If socializing in
cities has taken novel global forms, freed of geographical and territorial ties,
so far architecture has stayed rather motionless and inert.
To depict architectural globalism materially, one often looks at surfaces made
out of medium-density fibreboards coated with plastic films, onto which you
can print a picture of any material you want. To a global entity with centralised
decision making, it is an efficient and highly economical way to be using the
same generic material everywhere they spread. Although the boards can be
further customized for it to fit any given context, yet this in addition creates
more junk, literal toxic waste and short sited solutions to populate the global
cities. Global materials, in this particular case, end up being optimized and
abstracted to their limits until they become almost invisible to the naked eye.
Transnational Architecture
Architectural Association
Experimental 12
To single out a polar opposite form of practice to these global entities, one
could observe the production of art from Chicago based Theaster Gates. He
works locally, recycles locally sourced materials and involves local craft, peo-
ple and communities in his art. As a consequence to his approach, he ends
up reviving and revitalising his home neighbourhood, an area in the South
Side Chicago which has been previously in disrepair, abandoned, notorious
and neglected. Now, he runs Rebuild Foundation, part of a network of sister
organizations that collaborate to extend the social engagement also beyond
the particular neighbourhood.
BRIEF
As a starting point for the year, we will work on a collective research which
analyses the different global entities. This should help us understand how
they relate to both local and global context but also especially to construction
and materiality. You will document these case studies at different scales, plan-
etary but also equally at the scale of a furniture. Every participating student
will deepen their knowledge on their chosen area of global expertise by as-
sisted reading and writing. One might become an expert in franchising busi-
nesses, religions and globally practiced spiritual traditions, distribution and
logistics, food or even multi-layered transnational legal frameworks… Which-
ever area you will choose, will also become a basis from where the proposals
Theaster Gates, Island Modernity Institute and Department of Tourism, 2019. Mixed media installation. Standing cabi-
will start to develop. Unlike your case study (most probably), you will have to
net, wood, neon, concrete, ceramics, steel, plaster, glazed clay, graphite, chalk, slate. Image: Chris Strong also consider and take responsibility of the global resource extraction, ecolo-
gy and equality. In the tradition of Experimental 12, you will propose an inter-
vention that can be speculative yet keeping in mind that the documentation
of the project will always be done through a certain realist lens. Design will
be assisted by the latest photorealistic rendering and scanning technologies
and the architectural drawings are drawn to support a set of globally accepted
conventions.
During the year we will organize lectures and organize workshops to deal
with questions such as how do we construct and design in this global con-
text? How do we collectivize whilst being physically separated? What specific
methods can architects employ, to respond to the negative effects that glo-
balization and worldwide problems of gentrification? Why architecture should
answer to equality and internationalism over territories and national heritage?
In this context, your task will be to construct an architectural proposi-
tion or a spatio-economical intervention that is international and global,
but which takes responsibility and ownership of this global territory by
proposing an alternative set of rules to adhere to.
Transnational Architecture
Architectural Association
Experimental 12
TERM 1: COLLECTIVE RESEARCH AND A GROUP Transnational Proposal
PROJECT By the end of the first term the participating students will also formulate a more
speculative and propositional collaborative project in small groups. This project
The local anchoring will act as a first draft of their individual global transnational projects. As we
will be physically distributed in different locations, we will assist you to form a
Locality of each project will be articulated through critical analysis of local bor- protocol which allows us to work more comfortably with each other and makes
ders, separative conditions that are currently being enforced and the specific sharing of information easier.
labour, social and economic conditions of the city which the students are most
familiar with. To understand these aspects of locality in relation to the condition You will learn how to use the typical tools of an architect, putting an emphasis
of shared cultures of “global cities”, we need to also identify local centrality of on reading and drawing plans and creating photorealistic renderings. This ma-
place and geography, urban centres that they relate to and their global and/or terial will be used to communicate the proposals and to present it to a selected
local peripheries, regional and territorial networks. international jury in mid-December.
The global entity
Each student, depending on their location, will choose an institution, corpo-
ration, organisation or any entity which exists internationally and simultane-
ously materialises physically at a local level in their vicinity (as well of course
in other locations). These transnational entities will be analysed critically and
documented according to representational norms defined by the team.
Students will try to understand how these entities operate internationally. What
are the advantages of spreading a business, a belief system, a political or-
ganisation on such vast areas? Are there any disadvantages? What qualities
emerge from this condition?
Each student will document the inner mechanisms of these entities through
texts, diagrams, interviews…
Parallel to this research, and in an interconnected fashion, students will pick
local examples of the physical existence of the entity of their choosing, ideally
in a location they can access.
These local examples (buildings, shops, offices…) will be documented with
conventional architectural means and will allow for the acquisition of the rep-
resentational skills the unit is now known for.
John Hejduk, Cathedral 1996
Next page: German military operates a transnational flying hospital,
Airbus A310 MedEvac, here leaving towards Bergamo to pickup
COVID 19 patients to be treated in German hospitals, photo by
Kevin Schrief, Reuters, 2020
Transnational Architecture
Transnational Architecture
Architectural Association
Experimental 12
TERM 2: DEVELOPING THE PROJECT
Building on Term 1’s foundation, the students will start to refine their proposi-
tional model for their transnational entity. The proposal will get a local outpost
which will start to respond to the locality from a more objective and perhaps
technical point of view. The branches materialise. Is it an office? Is it a chap-
ter? Is it storefront? In any case, they will have to take an architectural form.
With architectural form comes design, technicality (TS), economy, amongst
many other aspects.
One will answer to questions such as: how will a local node in your internation-
al network relate to the topography, environment and climate? How is it inter-
linked to the local economy and labour? What are the locally available/used
materials and how understanding the essence of the local construction logics
can be used to root the project to their context?
Ghita Zahid, Leisure space for women of San Gabriel, Experimental 12, 2020 Alejandro Del Castillo, Proposed living module optimised for broadcasting , Experimental 12, 2020, below Daniel
Swarovski, Axonometric study of an existing case study house in California, Experimental 12, 2020
Transnational Architecture
Lewis Baltz, Von Karman Road between Alton and McGaw Roads looking East, 1974, The New Industrial Parks
Photograph by Mous Lamrabat
Transnational Architecture
Architectural Association
Experimental 12
TERM 3: Perfecting the portfolio
In the third term comes the time to see if our work holds up outside of the unit.
We will work on communicating the project to the rest of the school for juries
and tables. But we will also, depending on what the group has decided to work
on collectively, try to establish how to make this general project a reality.
The collective work: a project of transnational friendship
After having analysed the different entities in the first term, made individual
local proposals, the team should have a clear understanding of how they func-
tion and also relate to each other.
The group will gather frequently around question of objectives, logistics, gen-
eralisation and localisation of common problems. What can economies of
scale bring to this common project? Are certain branches of the entity more
suited for certain uses? Are these differences cultural? Material? Environmen-
tal? By the end of the term 2, as a group we decide on how to output the col-
lective research, so that it can help the team as a whole to broaden the topics
and contexts of the individual projects for the last term.
To clarify, during the course of the year, every student will have to design an
architectural object which is part of a larger project but will equally be account-
able to the group and the common research. Their design makes or breaks the
common project, the common project either makes or breaks their design.
Taneli Mansikkamäki is an architect and educator, and the founder of architecture practice
AGO. He has taught across the AA, from the Foundation course to the Experimental Pro-
gramme. Taneli previously worked for Future Systems and Cecil Balmond amongst others
and has served as a visiting critic at the SEU in Shanghai, University of Cambridge, AHO in
Norway and Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart.
Max Turnheim (1982) is an architect (DÉSA 2007) based in Paris. He has co-directed the
studio École alongside Nicolas Simon and now co-directs the studio UHO alongside Federico
Coricelli. Parallel to his practice, he teaches at the Architectural Association.
‘RIDDLES’ by Marguerite Humeau, 2017, Berlin Schinkel Pavillon
Transnational Architecture
Transnational Architecture Border fence Cheviot Hills, Colin McPherson, 2014
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