Andrew Todd / Edwin Heathcote (F/ GB)

The handshake of a building

11.07. - 17.07. 2010
Teilnahmegebühr: 695 / 925

... and the lost sense of touch in architecture.
The obsession with image in contemporary architectural production has reduced our relationship to buildings to an impression on the retinal screen. Buildings, however, exist beyond this -not just in three-dimensional volume, but also in time, in matter, and in relationship to the human body, which they are destined to clothe and protect.

The door handle represents the first point of contact in this problem: we have to physically enact the opening of the barrier between inside and out (and thresholds within), and this action has generated a microcosmic architecture of touch and movement, a necessary marriage between body and building. Juhani Pallasmaa refers to the door handle as the ‘handshake of the building’; a perceptive phrase, which anthropomorphizes the handle but which also, indicates its importance in the haptic impression of the act of entrance. The door handle is an under-played element in the history of architecture, even though noted practitioners have made significant contributions (Aalto, Le Corbusier, Gropius, Loos, Gaudi, Wittgenstein). This workshop will explore the physical creation of this tool for both fictional, narrative settings, and for specific, permanent settings on the site of Boisbuchet.

After one week we will leave behind designs for handles, which can only belong to a unique, place or which are rootless, nomadic, secret, sensual, textured, assertive, surprising, crude or elegant. There will be an exploration of the manufacturing processes, which remains extremely elemental; sand casting, investment casting, forging, bending and fabrication; we will look at the fundamental textures of material as they emerge from the process and look at production as a series of strippings back from the elemental state of the material. This would ideally lead to a design competition and ultimately to one or more handles which could emerge as production items to be manufactured, marketed and sold.

Andrew Todd

WORKSHOP LEADER
The workshop will be co-taught by Andrew Todd and Edwin Heathcote:

Andrew Todd studied English literature at Cambridge (where he was director of the European Theatre Group) and architecture at the University of Pennsylvania (with Ivan Illich and Joseph Rykwert). After a period of collaboration with Jean Nouvel he established his own practice in Paris in 2001. At the same time he completed the book ‘The Open Circle: Peter Brook’s Theatre Environments,’ written in collaboration with the great theatre director (published in 2003 by faber and faber). He was named, in 2009, one of the top 40 European architects under 40; his practice has secured commissions from clients such as the South Bank Centre (temporary concert hall on the banks of the Thames), Kevin Spacey and the Old Vic Theatre (the CQS in-the-round theatre, 2008), the Young Vic Theatre (built in 2006 with Haworth Tompkins), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Aberystwyth University, the Teatre Vert in Molde, Norway, Gault Milau chef of the year 2009 William Ledeuil (KGB restaurant) and the City of Marseille (grain silo opera house, 2011). Concentrating on spaces for the performing arts, his practice has a growing portfolio of industrial design commissions, including seating, lighting and door handles. Todd teaches and lectures throughout Europe and the United States (and in India), and writes for publications such as The Guardian, Architectural Review, Traces, The Enthusiast and Space and Society (for which he was a correspondent from the age of 26). His Studio is based in Paris.
http://www.studioandrewtodd.com/

Edwin Heathcote is an architect, writer and designer living and working in London. He has been the Architecture and Design critic of the Financial Times since 1999. He has worked in private practice and in architecture offices in the UK and the USA. He co-founded the architectural hardware and lighting manufacturer ize in 2001 and has commissioned and collaborated with architects and designers including Kenneth Grange, Sergison Bates, Ian Ritchie, Zaha Hadid, Peter Saville, 6a and David Adjaye. He is the author of over a dozen books on architecture and design including titles on London Theatres, Budapest, Architecture and Death, Contemporary Church Architecture and London Caffs. He also edited the book Furniture and Architecture and has just completed The Architecture of Hope on the Maggies' Centres. He is on the editorial boards of Architectural Design and Icon Magazine and is a trustee of London Open House. He has contributed to architectural magazines from the USA to Japan and Korea. His writing can be seen at www.ft.com. Edwin Heathcote lives in London.
www.ize.info