Although as ever the mass of work and research at the AA was an impressive sight to behold, there was a noted attempt to edit out what in previous years has been an overwhelming amount of information and present student's ideas with cohesion and clarity. There was also a little less authorship than usual. In the gallery next to the bar, work was framed and hung quietly on dusty grey walls, elegant models and casts were hung on walls, with no particular student claiming responsibility. In other studios attempts to blend their work with playfulness and fiction lead to a feel of storytelling and a design rooted if not in the real world, then at least in a convincingly constructed alternative.
Amanda Kastler's 'four realms of interiority' are intended to create an understanding of architecture that is less about objects that shape and more about interior experiences to inhabit – the city is portrayed as an inner state which is created as it is being experienced. The inhabitant of the room experiences the city from the inside out without ever leaving the room. The first realm of interiority speculates how the city can be transformed by the interior - via the imagination - from a single room. The fictional tale takes place in a room of a dreamer who uses the micro - the objects in his room – to imagine the macro – the city outside. The interior, through the mind of the individual transforms into the city. Her concept was strong and clear but it was her delicate models – painstakingly cut out sections in thin paper that were the most seductive part of her presentation. The inhabitants of Jorgen Johan Tandberg's project are the 'precarious workers' – the new working class within post-Fordist economies, for whom work is all-consuming. The unpredictable nature of their professional lives makes them strive for a life of 'minimum existence' – rejecting property and relationships as potential liabilities. Their lives are defined by a 'twisted hedonism' – the relief that comes with freeing oneself of traditional forms of comfort and refuge in the name of continuous destruction and rebuilding.
The architectural counterparts of this lifestyle are imagined in the project as the 'Service walls' – 4 walls, each 320m long and 4m wide, arranged in an open cross, and occupying the hostile and empty industrial port areas of Antwerpen. The walls contain services and common areas for the 1600 inhabitants, who will live in private developments built up against the service walls. Each wall leaves one side blank, providing the opportunity to exit and truly indulge in your own 'minimum existence' on the wall's backside. Beatrice Galilee
