Following on from Phil Coy’s stunning coloured glass façade commission Dazzle Camouflage in a Ten Colour Corporate Palette for developer Barrett’s new Loampit Vale Leisure Centre in Lewisham, curators Futurecity co-commissioned Phil Coy’s film-based work Façade.

Façade constructs a journey through a topology of contemporary glass architecture. The film mixes tracking shots over the façades of buildings, with high definition architectural visualisations of the same.     It is a film of non-spaces and immateriality featuring the indiscernible surfaces of contemporary glass buildings, reception lobbies and glass lifts, a green screen television studio and high definition digital animations of architectural ‘walkthroughs’ and never-to-be-built glass buildings.

Partly referring to Sergei Eisenstein’s unmade film The Glass House, the work transfers some of the contradictions associated with Modernist architecture to the faux-modern living described by the architecture of today. The film’s opening shots – cut from archive film of 1920′s plate glass manufacture – are permeated with thetriumphant utilitarianism peculiar to that era. From the spirited hot house of these technological advancements in materials, and the architectural theory that developed in tandem, the film gives way to a more fantastical vision of contemporary glass architecture far removed from these egalitarian origins.

Working with a production film crew and TV news presenter Julia Somerville and collaborating with architectural visualisation specialists Miller Hare, Façade’s production process implements the tools and hierarchical systems associated with corporate media production in order to break down the constituent parts of that system.

Façade is a single screen work commissioned by Arts Council England through Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network, Whitstable Biennale and Futurecity, with co-support from the BFI National Archive, National Glass Centre, Miller Hare, Pilkington Group Ltd and Foggo Associates.

Phil Coy is a Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN) Productions Fund awardee 2009.

Discipline architecture is anti-social in its most basic sense – it’s not only misanthropic, its design that kills off chance meeting and serendipity. At its worst discipline architecture can harm cities as effectively as any anti-social behaviour that its meant to discourage.

Even if the intention isn’t in question, the brutal aesthetic of much discipline architecture is unnecessary. With imagination an intended outcome can be accomplished with wit and style. My favourite examples in London are the McAlpine/HOK Sports Emirates Stadium’s anti car-bomb barriers.

Arsenal’s cannons can be sat on, and the outsize lettering invites photographs and interaction. They accomplish their utilitarian task (and are currently the strongest aspect of Arsenal’s defence – boom boom!) whilst creating an occasion and sense of place.

But elegant discipline is discipline nonetheless. No, far more friendly is design that actually invites play, interaction and reinvention. Let’s call it “indiscipline architecture”. Done well, it brings cities to life.

This approach was key for the Futurecity commission Skystation. Futurecity worked with artist Peter Newman to create a seat which would be naturally social, and give users an occasion to interact in unexpected ways, and even see their cityscape from new, surprising perspectives.

Travelling on sabbatical, I was lucky enough to see a great example of indiscipline architecture here in Auckland this week. The Danish artist Jeppe Hein (he of the Southbank Centre’s Appearing Rooms) specialises in creating public art work that invites play. His newest commission, Long Modified Bench Auckland is on a roof space at the brilliant Auckland Art Gallery.

There’s something in the instinct of a circus performer who knows that (other than the macabre threat of the trapeze artist or lion-tamer coming a cropper) what audiences really want to see is extraordinary feats enacted with humdrum objects. Jugglers with kitchen knives and frying pans. Balancing acts with chairs, tables and lampshades. There seems to be something universally exciting in seeing familiar objects reinvented in surprising, delightful ways.

For this reason, I think that the reimagining of street furniture and everyday features of our urban landscape is often more compelling than stand-alone sculpture. Stand alone public sculpture can be wonderful (like Jim Hodges’ Creative Time commission Look & See, or James Hopkins’ recent Futurecity commission Angled Ball), but too often, with little connection to the environment if finds itself in, it can be what US artist and architect James Wines has dubbed “the turd on the plaza” (or a phrase I like even more – “plop art”).

So more seating that invites climbing; tuned, musical railings; playful, tactile building facades, smart way-finding, naming and signage.

All these create stuff that lets you play with and play in your built environment. It might feel a little more indisciplined, but as part of a well designed development, invitations to play create the kind of places that people want to live in, work in and visit.

Andrew Missingham
Andrew is Associate Director, Futurecity. Currently travelling internationally on sabbatical, returning June 2012

You are invited on Tuesday 31^st January 2012 to the launch of a new art and science ‘circle’ for Cambridge following the opening reception for a new exhibition of the work of Susan Aldworth and Karen Ingham at the Ruskin Gallery.

‘Between - Mind and Matter‘ explores embodiment, who we are – and how we are – invested in the structure of our brains and our bodies. New medical imaging technologies have made bodies and brains visually permeable as never before and created an explosion in anatomical knowledge. However, in this flood of material knowledge, what are the questions we should be asking of how these scientific representations enrich our personal understanding of ‘self’ and ‘selfhood’?

Susan Aldworth and Karen Ingham present a series of films that explore the emerging meaning of embodiment:  what does it mean to be ‘between’ mind and matter. Aldworth’s films reflect her keen engagement with neuroscience and philosophy, as manifested in her films and prints, which weave together medical, personal and scientific narratives to develop an understanding of human identity. More about her work at: http://www.gvart.co.uk/artists.html#susanaldworth.

Ingham’s interest is in the narratives behind scientific imaging and objects, and the overlaying of representations, voices, histories and meanings of embodiment. More about Karen at: www.kareningham.org.uk.

The opening reception will be from 6.00 pm and at 7.15 pm you are invited to a talk and discussion with Susan Aldworth along with Professor Nicholas Humphrey and Professor Scott Lash to launch a new Cambridge art and science circle.  John Menzies and Bronaċ Ferran Guest Curator, VISUALISE public art programme will introduce the session. The talks will be held in room LAB006 at Anglia Ruskin University.

Cambridge’s strong performance jumps out from the pages of Cities Outlook 2012, the new report from Centre from Cities. Futurecity is currently working with Cambridge’s development, cultural, business, community and academic sectors in a uniquely creative mix to contribute a “future thinking” approach to placemaking.

From the Outlook report and our own work in the city, we can identify 10 factors are helping the city to thrive despite the recession:

1 Cambridge is home to some of the country’s leading high-tech firms – ARM, Cambridge Studio (part of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios), Autonomy, and Microsoft Research UK.

2 Cambridge’s private sector is still doing well – private sector jobs grew by 2.4% between 2009 and 2010, the third highest of any British city or large town.

3 Cambridge is Britain’s most innovative city by far – Cambridge had more patents per 100,000 residents than the next 6 most innovative cities combined.

4 Cambridge is building – it is the second fastest growing city in the UK, with thousands of new homes due to be delivered at Trumpington Meadows, Cambridge East, Clay Farm, and other sites.

5 Cambridge is embedding culture at the heart of its growth - Local and international artists are working with developers and communities to create long term visionary approaches to public realm design and community growth.

6 Cambridge attracts cultural tourists – the Fitzwilliam Museum recently posted 150,000 visitors for its acclaimed exhibition Vermeer’s Women. Kettle’s Yard, which itself has just had a highly successful show of Bridget Riley’s work, is planning a major overhaul. With 6 other accredited Cambridge University museums, they have been awarded a share of the Arts Councils £60 million “Renaissance” fund, with a bid that rated ‘outstanding’ on all five major judging criteria.

7 Cambridge is bringing together leaders from different industries  - The VISUALISE programme is setting up Cambridge’s first Art and Science Circle to discuss and promote interdisciplinary collaboration across culture, technology and science.

8 Cambridge is creating jobs for its young people – Its youth claimant count (a measure of youth unemployment) is the lowest of any city or large town in the country.

9 Cambridge has a very highly skilled population – it and Oxford are the only two British cities where more than half the working-age population have degree-level qualifications.

10 Cambridge is not, though, an unequal city – the Centre for Cities reckons it has the lowest levels of inequality of any UK city.

Futurecity Cambridge website

Sources:

• Cities Outlook 2012 www.centreforcities.org
• Growth sites webpages, www.cambridge.gov.uk
• Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum attracts record numbers (www.artdaily.org)

A Major new exhibition opens this week at the Ruskin Gallery in Cambridge. CAUTION MATTER by Liliane Lijn and Jamie Allen is  about art, industry, and mythology that will highlight the luminous and exciting work of  Lijn, a poet and visual artist and Allen,  a sound and media artist.   Lijn and Allen are embarking on a series of  journeys to  industry contexts across England and beyond documenting exposing and revealing the material and metaphorical realities of these often hidden environments.

The exhibition is the second in a programme curated by Bronac Ferran, guest curator on Anglia Ruskin University’s VISUALISE Public Art Programme, managed by Futurecity. visualisecambridge.org

Futurecity and Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge have begun the main programme of public art projects for the University’s V I S U A L I S E public art programme. Empty shops in the city are being taken over by ‘ V I S U A L I S E See++‘; artists’s film, video and installations, while artists London Fieldworks are exhibiting a new multi-channel video installation entitled ‘Rain-Prophets‘ in the University’s digitally enhanced Ruskin Gallery from 9th -13th January.

‘V I S U A L I S E See++’ includes films from artists working in art, computer art, science and technology areas  including Ernest Edmonds, Liliane Lijn, and Susan Aldworth and Markus Soukup  who won the Liverpool Art Prize in 2011, as well as moving image work by Anglia Ruskin film and fine art students.

London Fieldworks’ ‘Rain-Prophets’ is a new multi-channel video installation,  a poetic meditation on ecology and belief, on premonition and divination in the opening days of 2012.  This work  has emerged  from London Fieldwork’s  British Council funded ArtistLinks residency in Brazil in 2009.  ‘Rain-Prophets’ engages with themes of premonition and divination – and natural forces as well as human responses.

On Tues 17th January, a new exhibition, CAUTION MATTER, by Liliane Lijn and Jamie Allens opens at 6pm in the Ruskin Gallery. This is followed from 7pm – 9.30pm with FUTURE FLUXUS celebrating the 50th birthday of the influential art movement with performances by Liliane Lijn, David ryan, Circumstance and more.

V I S U A L I S E is a 6-month programme of innovative temporary and meanwhile public art projects throughout the city. Highlights include a major new commission by Circumstance and exhibited work by Liliane Lijn, Susan Aldworth, William Latham and Eduardo Kac.

For all the latest information go to visualisecambridge.org 

Shoreditch: former home of the Young British Artist, latterly incubator of the UK’s brave new hope – digital development. Large industrial warehouses and former Victorian workshops coupled with proximity to London’s heartland have historically made Shoreditch a magnetic hub for the experimental and progressive. So it’s no real surprise to find long-empty Bishopsgate goodsyard, just by Shoreditch overground station, is now home to ‘Boxpark’.

According to Boxfresh creator and heavyweight fashion brand consultant Roger Wade, Boxpark is the world’s first temporary shopping mall; ‘a living, fertile community of brands packed with talent, innovation and attitude’. It opened December 2011 and comprises 60 imposing jet-black, heavily branded stacked shipping containers spanning two floors. Insert glass doors on each container, align to Bethnal Green Road and fill with lifestyle brands and you have the Boxpark template. It will ‘pop-up’ for five years.

The rationale for this hipster retail mecca is to bring life to this disused corner of London. Lying strategically at the border between the modern glass and steel towers of the financial centre of the City of London and the creative community of Shoreditch, Boxpark aims to create a new retail location in an area with limited retail opportunity that should act as a catalyst to the wider economy.

And herein lies the problem. For Boxpark to meaningfully contribute to the local economy, it needs to look beyond lifestyle brands. On the day I visited, Boxfresh, Calvin Klein, Nike, Levi’s, Evisu, Calvin Klein and Oakley were all present and correct with ‘concept’ pop-ups. Admittedly, there are some interesting new initiatives – an Amnesty ship on the upper level for instance – but they are few and far between. It’s hard therefore, not to see the companies housed in Boxpark as little more than testing grounds for potential new mass marketing lines.

In this sense, Boxpark provides lifestyle retail with a valuable target audience / market research tool in the beating heart of London’s edgier cultural offer, but what exactly does that contribute to the local economy? The Evening Standard‘s Kieran Long defines the issue: “Boxpark basically tells corporations that they can come along and sell to this market (East London) without really understanding it or investing in its future. It is a retail smash-and-grab, and will leave no legacy when it leaves beyond another empty site awaiting redevelopment in Shoreditch.”

Shoreditch is an area that is characterised by a rich community of up and coming designers, SME developers and retailers, whether they be trading out of converted warehouse units or from a market stall off Brick Lane. Boxpark should offer a place where the diverse and eclectic cultures of Shoreditch can converge and fuel one another, perhaps forging new creative partnerships that become the mega-brands of the future. Boxpark is however currently fully leased. In its current state, it feels like an opportunity missed.

Bryant Park is a place that is a successful addition to New York City’s status. Located in West 42^nd Street, it is now in its fifth year of operation. The square was a crime-ridden area in the 1980s until a group of local businesses and retailers worked to develop a new park for the city. The large open square is surrounded on all sides by a library of skyscrapers (one for every decade) providing a dramatic backdrop to one of the few open spaces in midtown. Large numbers of shoppers, workers, familys and visitors make full use of the park.

Bryant Square has a European feel, reminiscent of Luxembourg Gardens. Large plain trees break the urban city scale, creating a translucent, patterned screen against the backdrop of buildings. A curated programme of seasonal events and activities makes full use of the park all year round. It has lawns, live events and an outdoor cinema in the summer and, on the day I arrived, a large uncluttered ice rink formed a vast white reflective sheet against an azure blue sky. A temporary restaurant pavilion, an enormous Christmas tree and hundreds of well-designed pop-up shops, painted racing green and showcasing high quality artisan products, filled the park.

 The architect and driving force behind the project, James Ramsey (of RAAD Studio), is proposing to use fibre optics and mirrors to bring sunlight down into the underground space, allowing plants to grow underground. It is reminiscent of an architecture student’s end of year project, but after the success of the High Line anything is possible, and as in London, New York needs visionaries. Ramsey was recently quoted by New York Magazine as saying “We’re channeling sunlight the way they did in ancient Egyptian tombs, but in a super modern way.” Luvin it!