Basic Information

Participants: Six master’s students in Architecture, Graduate School of Fine Arts
Location: London, UK
Period: April 29 – May 9, 2016

Achievements

Drawing on points made by the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre, the participants in this program aimed to describe the “rhythmanalysis” of humans, architecture, and space. Similarly to the program carried out during the previous year, this program’s focus of study was the King’s Cross redevelopment site in central London.

With the support of two academics from Central Saint Martins (CSM) of the University of the Arts London and two others from the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA School), the participants attempted to document human actions in everyday life that would expand the perception of time in urban space, while strategically examining the city’s double perimeter and its relation to urban rhythms. Their hypothesis was that a description of the “rhythmanalysis” of people, architecture, and urban space is a description of the physical environment of the city. To examine this hypothesis, they pursued the following procedures:

Work 1:
Drifting; The participants’ fieldwork explored areas that cannot be planned for redevelopment, and the contradictions and conflicts in the city structure as they are perceived at a human scale. This work was based on the Situationist concept of “drifting” as a way to identify urban problems.
The six participants then applied a similar analysis to areas on the redevelopment site, expressing their understanding through the precise drawing of varying architectural views (such as perspective, plan, axonometric, etc).

Work 2:
Choreography; The participants researched and analyzed the actions and practices that are both ordinary (in a sense that they occur on the site repeatedly) and extraordinary.

Work 3:
Ethnography; The participants expanded their descriptions of the relationship between the site and its human users, which was identified in Work 1 and 2, to include the periphery of the site.

Work 4:
Rhythmanalysis; Building on the findings at human scale from Work 1 and 2 and the findings at architectural scale from Work 3, the participants made descriptions of a proposed re-working of the relationships between these two scales.

At the interim report session, the critics appreciated the ways in which the participants had taken a neutral stance regarding the physical and social structures that exist between people, architecture and urban space. At the final presentation the participants were praised highly for their use of “rhythmanalysis” as a method for describing their proposals, and as an aesthetic representation of their observations. In concluding the program, the CSM members offered to provide the students with a studio for their future work and presentation, and proposed to conduct a joint workshop. The AA School members also expressed their interest in continuing this program and supporting its further development.