Bartlett Summer School '08

During the summer I attended the summer school program at the Bartlett. The two week program was meant to be a Micro-festival of Architecture, following on from the London based architecture festival that was held. During the course we were split up into three groups and then sub-categorised depending on what area we wanted to work on as part of our overall group assignment, which was to create a performance or festival of architecture. We spent several days exploring the South Bank and the River Thames. The subgroup I was part of in the first week's assignment was to build something out of and showcase objects collected and incorporate that into a performance. So myself and two other guys got thought of creating a portable homeless shelter, which opens up as a museam as well. The idea was that the homeless man (who had to be quite short as the whole thing was within an abandoned milk container thing) don't know the official name (left) was the performing agent, and the process of unfolding, opening an enclosed, box on wheels to transform it into something quite contrary to it's appearance, merely a functioning bed space, chair, shelves, roof, exhibiting found objects as a small museam etc. and this was to be the 'performance'. This was then set up on top of a stage we built and the ceiling of the portable home was used for a projection of another performance.

Over the second week, we were assigned a new project which was also meant to be a festival. For that, we designed and constructed a suspension bridge (and surprisingly, it didn't collapse as we all expected) along with an almost fictional environment created with wooden rods/poles attached to the bridge that would trigger movement and sound that created the whole atmosphere of the festival. We tried to reconstruct the traditional meaning of a festival, which is already there. The visitor created the festival as he/she entered and ended as he/she left. More details can probably be found somewhere else, and I apologise for not explaining it better.




All this said, if anyone is interested in attending any future summer schools at the Bartlett, then please feel free to contact me (by e-mail, which is provided) and I'll give you some better feedback from myself as well as others. And the photos provided here are just a select few from the ones I took, I have more which can be found under the bartlett ss 08 facebook group.