SUMMER SCHOOL AS A STAGE

10 August 2018 Architectural Association, London The AA comprises an amalgamation of townhouses, secondary structures and interventions, providing the backdrop to a history of academic life and education. Considering our three-week presence within the school as a collective performance, we set out to reimagine the AA’s premises as a stage by means of a retroactive set design for the summer school itself. It played out within the theatre of a single room: our studio space. Act 1 36 Bedford Square, AA Diploma Unit 10 Studio Deploying the production of a 1 to 5 theatre model as a device for observing and articulating particularities of the space, we constructed an image of our studio. Drawing from collective experience, common elements deemed requisite to the everyday of the studio space were incorporated to create a synoptic whole. Act 2 16 Morwell Street, AA Sustainable Environmental Design Studio Interim Review In the process, the construction itself became the performance, with the model as the main protagonist, engaging with new situations and audiences. As such, changing venues for presentations caused new fragments and objects to enter the scene, coming to represent a multitude of places in one. Act 3 36 Bedford Square, First Year Studio Final Review In a final move, 1 to 1 fragments were placed back into the space of the school to become part of a new narrative authored by the audience itself. Setting the scene for a re-enactment of the studio work in three acts, the last one written as it happened—a play within a play, a summer school within a summer school. Credits: Tutors: Benjamin Groothuijse, Caspar Frenken & Korbinian Kainz Guests: David Schmidt, Mara Kanthak, Sam de Vocht, Thomas Pearce, Tjerk de Boer Students: Cemre Basak Cecen, Dilan Senocak, Jaehee Ahn, Jose Ramon Rodriguez, Joshua Lee, Joshua Lee, Kai Lin, Micaella Costa, Peechana Chayochaichana, Shreya Nambiar, Sindhu Chandrashekhar, Sonja Trajkovic, Vitul Agarwal, Xinchao Lin, Yuan Xu, Ziqing Becky Xu For more information:

Summer School 2018 – Bits, Bytes, Fragments

Unit 5: Summer School as a Stage Brief

Backstage Publication Benjamin Groothuijse Caspar Frenken Korbinian Kainz