Urban Interior: Corridor

Setting itself in a new geopolitical divide, Intermediate 4 will continue to investigate urbanity from the perspective of the interior. The confrontation of commonly opposed scales will create unexpected ways to consider both the detail and the city through textured and layered architectural strategies. Continuing the unit’s work in historically rich settings, we will pursue our experimental design processes in the evolving context of southeast Asia. The recent end of the political oddity of a kilometres-long Malaysian railway territory threading through Singapore’s sovereign state will be our opportunity to look at territorial linearity in one of Asia’s vertical playgrounds. Our investigation will be informed by contrasted studies of European architectural grammar, engaging in dialogue with the hybrid Singaporean social and morphological experiment.

As a typological setting, the corridor will be our building block and tool to suggest novel urban linearity. Through a series of staged exercises we will explore this mundane and utilitarian space as a possible organisational apparatus and multi-scale spatial experience. A systematic parameterisation of pictorial and classical architectonics will form the basis for our investigation into a phenomenological reading of space that will offer instrumental insights into historical shifts in architectural typologies as physical expressions of social and political change.

The year will be enriched by a series of seminars and workshops exploring both historical references and advanced production tools. The unit will apply its unique dedication to representational techniques and rulebased approaches to create rich design processes merging specific scales and forms of investigation. Acting on a unique urban situation while at the same time learning from a particular spatial typology, we will aim at infusing cultural, social and experimental data into an organisationally driven urban realm.

Unit Staff

Nathalie Rozencwajg studied and has been teaching at the AA since 2004 as well as being the coordinator of the AA Visiting School in Singapore. She is cofounder of RARE architects who have been awarded the RIBA 2011 award and RICS Project of the Year Award for Town Hall Hotel in London and is working on large-scale projects exploring advanced fabrication methods notably in the Arctic Circle. She was recently commended as emerging woman architect of the year. www.r-are.net

Michel da Costa Gonçalves studied in Spain and France, and later graduated from the AA Emergent Technologies & Design programme. Cofounder of RARE architects, he is a former project architect for Shigeru Ban, notably on the new Pompidou museum in Metz, and AS in Paris. Director and author of ‘City’ series for Autrement publishers and contributor to The Art of Artificial Evolution/Springer Natural Computing Series, he has previously taught at the ENSAPL and is coordinator of the AA visiting school in Singapore since 2006.