The BAAD project ended with a habitable structure to remain in the studio for Art & Design students. However, a lot of knowledge was gained throughout the year-long process and further research completed after. As a result, a paper was submitted for the 2014 AAE conference: Living & Learning, recounting the collaboration and by understanding their approach to studio usage, we are able to reflect on our studio approach in an architectural setting.
Issues of negotiation, the relevance of generating networks, and understanding site through artefacts in studio, were all key discussion points in the paper. Writings on Rober Smithson’s Non-sites and Daniel Buren’s The Function of the Studio helped inform our understanding of the studio domain in art practice and suggesting cross-disciplinary approaches for our own work.
The abstract is as follows:
“This paper intends to draw on a recent live project from Birmingham School of Architecture’s Co.LAB initiative as a vehicle to explore the pedagogic and creative process that occurs in response to the place of production – the studio. The project required a designed intervention located in the Art & Design studios, to create a new working environment for the students after their recent move to the rest of the School of Art building. The studio environment will remain the focus for this investigation and is pertinent in this particular project with the combined involvement of students from the Architecture and Art & Design programmes. The Art & Design course draws on a ‘post-studio’ philosophy – initiated by the earthwork artist Robert Smithson – one where work is produced outside of their defined workplace. Dialogue between the architecture and art & design students fluctuated between the collaborative (leading towards a design) and consultancy (informing the architects of requirements for the intervention). The paper shall document this dialogue to illustrate the product of a post-studio environment and its relevance to architectural education in a live project scenario – leading towards an evaluation on the comparable practices between art, design and architecture when the work is based on a scale and setting outside of the usual studio environment.”The paper was presented in a reading group at the AAE Conference, University of Sheffield and will feature as part of the conference’s proceedings.
postscript: the full article is released on Charrette Vol.2, issue 1 available here.
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