AA HONOURS 2015: FORTUNE PENNIMAN, DIPLOMA 5

23 June 2015 Architectural Association, London desert, only desert.... The temenos is a rejection of predetermined value in architecture; An interior where boundaries cease to exist, where use is never prescribed, where value cannot be quantified. And ultimately, where what you do and where you do it, can only be determined by your self. A ground of difference that reveals the conflict & contradictions that Dubai desperately tries to hide. To be ambivalent is to have simultaneously conflicting feelings. Why can't architecture be ambivalent? The other side of Dubai, beyond the branded city of spectacle, is desert. The desert is a place where nothing is fixed, where territory is defined not by lines, but by moments in landscape. Temenos is a space so large that it creates a nature in and of itself. An interior where architecture dissolves. It erases program, it erases value ...what starts in desert, ends in desert Thank you for all the bad, as much as all the good. And to the mentors that only a house like the AA could force you to meet. If it's any good, it's because those around were better. For more information: Diploma 5 Unit Brief AA Honours on AA Conversations