iGuzzini Travelling Award
El Lissitzky pursued imaginary structures by means of afterimages and mechanisms of sight. He called the relationship between the motion of objects and light the ‘Immaterial Material’.
The following project explores the notions of ‘immaterial material’ through the study of movement and electromagnetics at two locations near each other in east London: The Balfron tower by Enro Goldfinger and The Robin Hood Garden estate by Alice + Peter Smithson.
The first part of the project: a bowling centre with a canopy made up of individual ‘leaves’ designed to capture the invisible topographies of the electromagnetic environment.
The second part: a ‘pool’ at the Balfron Tower.
Alexis Urwin represents a new kind of student. The 3-Dimensional world he inhabits and occasionally alludes to in his wonderful drawings does not suffer the assumptive learning of others. His project for an Electromagnetic Bowling Lane is ambitious and thorough. The drawings are snapshots of its operational use only and close examination of the programmatic diagrams is necessary to see how much thought has been invested in this electro-active creature. The bowling balls trajectories are traced across the structure and the interaction between man and his built environment is ‘tuned up’, and enjoyed. This project is a rare creature.
Tutor(s)
Prof Mohsen Aboutorabi