TEMPORAL FACADES_LAB_2006

Temporal Facades was submitted to the LAB [London Architecture Biennale] selection committee in late 2005. This committee was made up from 19 panel members, including Peter Ackroyd, Paul Finch, Zaha Hadid and Rowan Moore. The project was accepted for inclusion into LAB_2006.

The work was shown for 10 days in Brewers Yard in Clerkenwell, in the offices of BDP Architects. The installation consisted of 12, 42 inch Plasma screens, arranged in the glass façade of an annex building in the middle of the square. The work was selected as a featured project by the organisers.

The project focussed on the relationship between modern London’s dematerialised working practices, the banking industry typifying this, and the more physical spaces of the city. The locations of interest in the films were selected along the route of the biennale. This started in Southwark Cathedral, and ended in Kings Cross. The selected ‘Nodes’ were Borough Market, Tate Modern, St.Pauls Cathedral, Smithfield Market, Clerkenwell Green, and Kings Cross. All of these spaces celebrate their ‘physicality’.

Borough Market used footage of the goods of the market, masked behind the imposing structures of the railway bridges overhead. In the centre of the market there is a junction, through which sky can be seen. The complexity of the space reflected the medieval history of the market. In contrast, Smithfield meat market is a very structured architectural space. The route of the buying public, traders and tourists is East West along the length of the market, whilst the selling traders deliver and process the meat via the North and South flanks.

The Tate Modern building has lost its original purpose, and been converted from a former power station to a gallery. This space was selected because it reverses the processes happening in the city. Like its neighbour, St. Pauls, the buildings celebrate the materialisation of the dematerialised [mankind’s imagination]. The footage on both locations deliberately ignores filming the actual structure. The Tate modern footage is made up form reflections photographed, and filmed in buildings across the river, and in adjacent buildings. St. Pauls uses old etchings and drawings to describe is space.

Kings Cross and Clerkenwell Green celebrate the location rather then buildings. Kings cross captures the chaos of its reinvention, and Clerkenwell Green focuses on the pavement structure that has replaced the ‘green’.

London Architecture Biennale 2006 – Change ISBN 1-902854-25-x



The London Architecture Biennale - 2006 from Andrew Stiff on Vimeo.