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CRAZY PAVING

Part 1 Project 1999
Gaspar Libedinsky
 Architectural Association London | UK
Concepts from architecture and the performing arts can be transferred from one to the other, and back again. Concrete helps to 'materialize' my intentions of turning the static into dynamic, as a principle of transformation.
'Taking the sidewalk for a walk' is a performance which intends to explore the way in which new social, architectural and urban conditions may be achieved, by reorganizing the existing surface material.
Having been given Whites Row Car Park in the City of London as the site for a housing project, its floor slabs are reorganized by folding them into apartments. Voids connect spaces, walls divide spaces, windows selectively reconnect spaces, whilst also creating furniture.
Potential homeowners buy a strip of slab from the car park and, following the rules, they fold the representative piece of paper they receive into the house of their dreams.
Without knowing the way in which their neighbours were folding their own strip, the adjacent conditions achieved were unpredicted. Neighbours had to face the reality of possibly having glass party walls, and furniture that demanded observing and being observed. Windows and voids were created on all floors allowing light, views, smell and noises to filtrate from one apartment to the other.


'For an artist worthy of the name, a constraint is anything but a vexation or an imposed rhetorical system. It is a support, an aid to invention, an enjoyment of form (and art is a question of form), and a liberation from the tyranny of the message.' From: Oulipo Compendium 1998
A student is someone denied the pleasure of building, trapped in the house of hypothesis. In the absence of real client and budget, other relevant criteria for the production of work are invented. These constraints must be juggled to create work which speculates on universal and topical questions of architecture, whilst satisfying prticular educational requirements.
Above all, the project must excite intellectual development; invoke the joy of experiment, investigation and curiosity.
The housing proposal operates on the premise that enough material exists in the 'host' car park building to be recycled into apartments. The method of concrete cutting and 'folding' results in a tightly controlled re-assemblage of a utilitarian building. Unpretentious yet sophisticated, concrete architecture emerges, making space, light and social relations out of existing banalities.
The project is brilliant because it enjoys constraints, treats them as productive parameters, and reveals the connections between theory and practice. And it's not just fun between consenting architects (e.g. tutor and student), it represents construction as a site of pleasure.
1999
Saturday night modular
A concrete cube opens to reveal the possibilities of the material. A body that occupies and modifies the space -taking and leaving traces of its visits.
'Under the pavement, a beer'. The proposal to create services under the pavement by transforming slabs into lockers suggests the possibility of public domains becoming private when they are flipped over.
'The other day I was walking to school when suddenly I got stuck to the pavement. After several attempts I finally managed to get free. Feeling somehow strange, I carried on walking when suddenly I realized that the slabs had...gone for a walk.'
'Suddenly the slabs felt a great impulse to walk towards the construction site, where they finally found a place to relocate for a while.'
'A girl stopped us, realizing that there was something strange. She stood on the slabs very close to me. It was a very intimate situation..'
'We continued walking until they decided to check out the computer shop. We then prepared to cross Tottenham Court Road..'
'My piece of sidewalk was now in the middle of the street, creating a pedestrian island. Cars had to respond to this new condition.'
'We were suddenly back at Bedford Square where the slabs finally decided to relocate in their original position, and let me go for tutorials..'
Whites Row Car Park, Spitalfields, London.
Concept: the static becomes dynamic. Le Corbusier's 'bottles' unfold. At Whites Row Car Park, concrete slabs fold into apartments.'
Interior of Whites Row Car Park. Diamond blade cuts concrete slab, which is then folded into a wall. A void connects spaces. A wall divides spaces. A window selectively reconnects spaces whilst a table is created. Life begins in the Car Park.
Suggestions as to how concrete slabs might fold into walls, beds, chairs, tables and stairs, subsequently creating a void or a window that connects spaces and exhibits the neighbours' life. Architecture and furniture become one.
Generic transformation from Car Park to Housing Block. Concrete slabs reorganize into 30 identical apartments with voids to allow light and air to enter. Corridors provide access. Ground level (car park). Ramps (circulation and public facilities)
Fold your own house. Congratulations!! You have just acquired foldable house no: 28 situated on the fourth floor, with corridor facing north.
Neighbours!: Richard and Clare de la Mare (architects), Thelma Hunt (artist), and Demos and Hilda Fouroulis (paparazzi and shoe collector) fold paper into the house of their dreams.
Fouroulis' Apartment: living area on upper level, swimming pool on lower level. Following the rules, what is not concrete is glass. Architecture adopted possibilities and limitations of paper models.
Fouroulis' Apartment: Demos works in his studio while Hilda prepares tea in the kitchen. Sotiris and Zorba rest in their "Dutch style" bedrooms.
Fouroulis' Apartment: Demos usually swims with his clothes on. The concrete slab was eroded and cut using a waterjet operating at a pressure of 83N/mm2, leaving the reinforcing steel in place and undamaged, allowing the concrete slab to be folded.
Neighbours!: the 'public void' in between the apartments allows light, air, smell, noise and views to filtrate. De la Mare and Hunt discover their indiscreet glass party wall. Perkins watches the sky, imagining what will happen next.
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