Beatriz Colomina - Inflection 06 - Originals

John Paul Rysavy

John Paul Rysavy is an architect and collaborator in the design and research practice And-Either-Or. He worked with SHoP Architects, Will Bruder, Brian MacKay-Lyons, and David Heymann. He was a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome, the Charles Moore Foundation, and the Alvar Aalto Foundation. Rysavy is a recipient of the Stewardson Keefe LeBrun Grant from the Center for Architecture Foundation, the Francis J. Plym Fellowship from the Illinois School of Architecture, and the Richard Rogers Fellowship from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He served as a guest critic at various academic institutions and held teaching positions at the University of Texas.

Jonathan A. Scelsa

Jonathan A. Scelsa is an architect and partner in the cross-disciplinary practice opAL. Scelsa’s design work has been supported by the New York State Council of the Arts, the Architectural League of New York, and the American Academy in Rome as the recipient of the Mark Hampton Rome Prize in Design. He was the co-editor of the book The Function of Style. Before founding op.AL, Jonathan practiced with Foreign Office Architects, Hashim Sarkis Studios, Smith-Miller and Hawkinson, and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. Scelsa has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Rhode Island School of Design, Pratt Institute, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Lachlan Welsh

Lachlan Welsh holds a Bachelor of Environments in Architecture from the University of Melbourne and is currently working at DesignInc in Melbourne. His design work explores the ways in which digital design technologies can pair with architectural theory and history to generate new formal outcomes.

Olympia Nouska

Olympia Nouska is an architect based in Copenhagen and a teaching assistant for the Master programme: Political Architecture: Critical Sustainability at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. Nouska is a founding member of By•Works, an architectural collective engaged in exploring the social and political implications of architectural materiality.

Sir Peter Cook

Sir Peter Cook is a graduate of the Bournemouth College of Art and the Architectural Association (AA) in London. Professor Cook has been a pivotal figure within the architectural world for 50 years. He is one of the founding members of the Archigram Group, who were jointly awarded the Royal Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 2004. In 2007 he received a knighthood for his services to architecture. In 2011 he was granted an honorary Doctorate of Technology by the University of Lund.

Sean Godsell

Sean Godsell holds a Bachelor of Architecture (hons) from the University of Melbourne and a Master of Architecture from RMIT. He founded Sean Godsell Architects in 1994. Godsell is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (FRAIA) and member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). His work is published in the world’s leading architectural journals and he lectures and exhibits in the USA, UK, China, Japan, India, France, Finland, Germany, Italy and New Zealand as well as across Australia.

Zeynep Tulumen

Zeynep Tulumen is a graduate of the Master of Architecture Construction and City (hons) at the Politecnico di Milano. Tulumen attended the Alta Scuola Politecnica (ASP) programme, awarded with a double degree in Architecture. She is a PhD student at the Politecnico di Torino. Currently, she is undertaking research on gentrification and neighbourhood transformations from the perspective of inner cities of Istanbul.

CONTENTS

Editorial

Deniz Balik Lokce The Real Deal

Beatriz Colomina In Conversation: X-Ray Architecture

Betsabea Bussi and Zeynep Tulumen Cities through the Looking Glass

Sean Godsell Architecture and the Crisis of Identity

Dominic On A Point Cloud Darkly

Ben Waters A Museum Made Digital

Anna Kilpatrick Unfinished Palazzo

Alison Brooks In Conversation: Ideals, then Ideas

EDITORIAL

Anna Petrou, Brittany Weidemann and Harrison Brooks

In design and architecture, the elusive attribute of original is continually sought after, and often viewed as a marker of success. Inflection vol. 6: Originals explores the contentious notion of originality and authorship in an increasingly digital society. How can architects and designers redefine their relationship with originality to enrich and inform their work?

A preoccupation with originality has become ubiquitous in the design fields; however, historically, this has not always been the case. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, architecture was created from a catalogue of formalised techniques, associated with Classicism and Gothic. The advent of Modern Architecture in the 20th-century heralded a shift and originality became an essential constituent of ‘good design.’ Throughout the 20th-century, architects accepted this idea as fundamental. Contemporary technology, however, has disrupted these assumptions. As replication and copying become ever more commonplace due to emerging digital techniques and production, originality becomes ultimately meaningless.

Much of the work in vol. 6 is indebted to the writing of theorist Walter Benjamin. His text The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction noted the significant impact that technologies of reproduction have on art and culture. 1 Benjamin’s theory continues to be affirmed as digital reproduction becomes increasingly accessible and normalised. Philosopher Jean Beaudrillard expanded upon Benjamin’s theory in his seminal work Simulacra and Simulation . This book informs authors, artists and architects as they grapple with the proliferation of digital imagery in society today. 2 Deniz Balik Lokce introduces the theories of both Benjamin and Beaudrillard. Focusing on the work of architectural firm BIG, she explains how mechanical reproduction results in simulacra and simulation as design work is cast adrift from its original context.

The phenomenon of Chinese copycat cities is critiqued by Betsabea Bussi and Zeynep Tulumen. The authors analyse the nature of ‘simulacrascapes;’ cities that begin as copies but over time develop their unique characteristics that reflect local environments. These copycat cities reveal the tension between what may be deemed true originals or replicas. While our relationship with originality is fraught with tension, Hannah Wood and Olympia Nouska are optimistic that the development of digital fabrication technology is reconnecting the architect with the act of making. Although this technology can ostensibly be used to create copies, it also allows for the easy construction of bespoke elements and architectural solutions.

Copying can also be leveraged as a representational technique in the form of collage, as described in John Paul Rysavy and Jonathan Scelsa’s piece, ‘Still Lifelike.’ Rysavy and Scelsa understand that the contingency of objects placed on a field generate a dialectic between the given objects and thereby form commentary. The ability to collage objects that could never exist together in the physical world is unique to collage as a creative medium. Through art, we can create new realities. On deeper inspection, our contemporary understanding of originality is closely engaged with an understanding of what constitutes reality. The value of manufactured or ‘fake’ images is that they describe realities that surpass the merely physical. Anna Kilpatrick’s thesis project, ‘Unfinished Palazzo,’ demonstrates a reality constructed of history and culture as she delves into the heritage of Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, a building that was never completed.