Crafted Narratives - make-value, use-value

Takero Shimazaki and Ana Araujo

This year Intermediate 2 will cross the Atlantic and seek inspiration in the unorthodox architecture of Italo-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992). Sceptical about predominantly intellectualised approaches in design, Bo Bardi spoke in favour of a 'design-free' attitude in architecture, devising a more direct and visceral connection between the act of making and the act of using. In a world today, where architecture seems more and more corporate and alienated from the general public, where contractors seem to be running the show, endorsed by an overwhelming burden of mandatory regulations, it is stimulating to find Bo Bardi's approach that bypasses formalities in favour of a straightforward, spontaneous engagement with material, user and context.

Bo Bardi believed that unorthodox architectures would encourage unorthodox activities, giving birth to a happier and freer society. To achieve this, architecture should be thought of not as a 'monument to (Western) civilization' but as an 'infrastructural environment for living', by focusing on material and contextual grounding, tolerance to 'architectural incidents' and a taste for improvisation and sensitivity towards popular manifestations in culture.

Bo Bardi saw poetry not in the polished virtuosity of the drawing but in the spontaneity of crafting of simple, ordinary things and developed a fresh viewpoint in architecture that promises to reinvigorate the exhausted discourse in Europe today. Based on this Intermediate 2 will reengage with the users, with our cities and with our immediate living environment.

In the first term, we will research Bo Bardi's oeuvre and adopt her methodologies to investigate and record our site in Soho, London. We will focus on material–specific processes of crafted model- and map-making. We will then travel to Brazil and take a close look at her buildings and also the cultural material that gave her inspiration. In the second term we will design a building in Soho following a chosen aspect of Bo Bardi's architectural approach. Soho, like Bo Bardi's Brazilian context, is by nature a fast-changing environment that accommodates a fairly unorthodox mode of living, with its long history of immigrating waves and its unusual mix of sex shops, brothels, high-end restaurants, theatres, pubs and housing. In the third term we will compile the projects that have been developed throughout the year in a crafted book, with the help of a workshop. This book will then be presented to the Bardi Institute as a potential artefact for the 2014 international exhibition commemorating the life and work of Lina Bo Bardi.

Unit Staff

Takero Shimazaki is a director of a leading UK practice, Toh Shimazaki Architecture in London. He also runs t-sa forum workshops, which are associated with the practice. He has taught and lectured internationally. The practice combines critical thinking with projects that are built and realised since 1996.
www.t-sa.co.uk

Ana Araujo practises as a designer, an educator and a researcher. She works at the crossover between spatial and textile design, having published and exhibited internationally (Germany, Holland, Brazil, UK, Japan, Australia). Ana is currently working on a publication and exhibition about Lina Bo Bardi's work, as part of a larger project of dissemination of twentieth-century Latin American craft and design worldwide.