Unseen Characters
Other Ways of Knowing Buildings
SuperStudio 2
Emmett Scanlon, Teaching Fellow
Dr Martina Murphy, Associate Head of School
An unseen character in theatre, comics, film, or television, or silent character in radio or literature, is a character that is mentioned but not directly known to the audience, but who advances the action of the plot in a significant way, and whose absence enhances their effect on the plot. This SuperStudio is curious about who and what are the unseen characters of architecture. How do we find them and then represent them? And when identified, how might this change what we architects do and, how might our understanding of these characters, essential to advancing the plot, alter our attitude to architecture?
There is an emerging body of work in research, theory and practice which is aiming to articulate the agency of buildings, recognising and seeking to map not only what buildings are, but what they do and how they act and for whom. Often portrayed as background things, neutral things, against and in front of which we play out our lives, buildings are really far more active that we realise. The studio seeks to engage with buildings in this way. Other research seeks to reveal the background histories of architecture, the clients, the builders, the commissioners, the occupants; buildings are made by more than the architect alone. The studio is curious about understanding buildings through the true range of humans who contribute to and sustain their existence.
The studio in 2020 begins with the unseen character of the individual students in the studio. Making memory theatres, students work back from experience and forward to new imagined worlds in collage and models. Then, working from a home and place of residence or work students survey, document and record through drawings and models the rooms in use and how they each use them. In these drawings and actions narratives of architecture emerge, histories, true stories of lives lived in the company of buildings. Then students work together in groups, building a new building together made from the rooms and models of their lived experience.This first task, enables students to share and reveal parts of our individual unseen characters to each other, starting where the studio continues, placing people at the centre of the first design conversations and negotiations.
STUDIO RESEARCH STATEMENT
Research Content and Process
An unseen character in theatre, comics, film, or television is a character that is mentioned but not directly known to the audience. This character is one who advances the action of the plot in a significant way and whose absence enhances their effect on the plot. Such a character is present but may not specifically appear on stage. This studio seeks to consider the notion of the unseen character in architecture and it does so in two ways. Firstly, the studios aims to articulate the agency of buildings. Often portrayed as background, neutral things, the agency of a building as a material, spatial and socially designed object, is less considered. (Heynen, 2013). Buildings change us as we change them and a true understanding of what a building actually is requires us to find ways to note the material, spatial and social realities of buildings in both design and use and this search guides the research of this studio. Secondly, buildings too are often discussed as the sole work of individual architects. But the background histories of buildings are far more complex. This studio is thus also curious about understanding buildings with reference to the true range of humans who both contribute to and sustain their existence, discussing buildings as this material and spatial continuum of collective human activity and endeavour.
Description and Methods
The SuperStudio structure provides a specific opportunity to consider the learners themselves as unseen characters, prompting the development of methodologies of teaching and learning that while grounding learner work and output within curricula, also establishes specific interests and individual positions of learners in architecture. These positions are intended to respond to the notion of expanded field of contemporary architecture. Secondly, the superstudio seeks to expand the ways and means by which students understand the social, cultural, political and other aspects of buildings. Hilde Heynen (2013), has identified that to date, much of these attempts to articulate the social, spatial and material reality of buildings has occurred in text, and not in drawings or other visual representations. Boundary Object theory, (Leigh Star 1998), is used to frame both the teaching and learning and the representational /visualisation intentions of the studio.
Dissemination
Dissemination and communication of the findings of the studio is critical to the development of the research question and the teaching and learning experiences of the student. Students will be supported to disseminate their work in a variety of fora, and such work will also be disseminated at appropriate moments to critique and assess the teaching and learning intentions. In 2020/21 the parameters by which the studio will be recorded and documented will be established.
For more information on this SuperStudio, please contact Emmett Scanlon