www.fgks.org   »   [go: up one dir, main page]

Instruments Nine and Ten by Nat Chard

Page 1

CHAPTER TITLE Bartlett Design Research Folios

Nat Chard Instruments Nine and Ten

A


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

B


BARTLETT DESIGN RESEARCH FOLIOS

Nat Chard Instruments Nine and Ten





CONTENTS

1 (previous) Instrument Eight, collaboration with Perry Kulper. 2 Instrument Six.

5

Project Details

6

Statement about the Research Content and Process

8

Introduction

10

Aims and Objectives

42

Questions

42

Context

46

Methodology

48

Dissemination

60

Project Highlights

61

Bibliography

68

Related Publications

69


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Project Details Author

Nat Chard

Title

Instruments Nine and Ten

Output Type

Design and built instruments

Date

2014 to 2020

Solo Exhibitions

Bored Clouds Tickled by Frightened Tornadoes, The Bartlett, UCL (2018); Entreentre, Leth & Gori, Copenhagen (2015); Unreliable Sightings of..., Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (2015)

Group Exhibitions Drawing Attention, Roca London Gallery (2020); DUTIFUL IM/ PROPER, College of Architecture and Planning at CU Denver (2020) Co-exhibitors (selected) Tom de Paor, Mark Dorrian, Kersten Geers, Adrian Hawker, Andrew Kudless, Perry Kulper, Jimenez Lai, Carl Lostritto, O’Donnell+Tuomey, Achim Menges, Neil Spiller, Nada Subotincic, Jana VanderGoot, David Van Severen, Mark West Collaborators

Perry Kulper, University of Michigan

Other Assistance PhD candidate Zhuyang Chen, UCL Engineering (operation of high-speed film camera to capture paint throws from Instrument Ten); Thomas Parker (3D scans of Instrument Ten); Yiannis Ventikos, UCL Engineering (advice on fluid dynamics); B-Made, The Bartlett (workshop help and advice) Commissioners

Anthony Kiendl; The Bartlett, UCL

Curators

Kevin Hirth, Anca Matyiku, Jenifer Papararo

Funded By Dreyers Fond, Statens Kunstfonds Arkitekturudvalg and Nationalbankens Jubilæumsfond af 1968; Sir Banister Fletcher Trust; The Bartlett Architecture Research Fund; Winnipeg Arts Council and Manitoba Arts Council

3 Instrument Nine.

6



NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Statement about the Research Content and Process Description

In the practice of architecture, however, aspects of

design are not always possible to discuss because they exist in the realm of tacit knowledge. This research acknowledges this reality and develops by:

Instruments Nine and Ten search for means of developing tacit knowledge by manipulating the essential terms of architectural drawing: projection, reception and sciagraphy. They belong to an ongoing body of research that examines indeterminate occupations in architecture beyond the reductive predictions of programme.

1. Placing the researcher in a phenomenal relationship with the issue that is being studied; 2. Examining didactic instruments in astronomy, natural history and natural sciences;

Questions

1. In both our phenomenal experience and representation of architecture, shadows play an important role. If we can disturb the shadow beyond our expectations, how does this affect the presence of architecture?

3. Designing, constructing and operating architectural instruments for gaining tacit knowledge; 4. Working iteratively between different generations of instruments and learning from the evolution of the work;

2. What degrees of influence do object, surface and light source parallax have on the relational performance and perception of a floating shadow?

5. Sharing tacit knowledge by opening up the work to the phenomenal experience of others in public exhibitions.

3. How can the terms of architectural projection be reconsidered through the projection of paint rather than light?

Dissemination

Two solo exhibitions in collaboration with Perry Kulper at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, and The Bartlett, London; a smaller solo show in Copenhagen and two group exhibitions in London and Denver. Five journal papers (New Zealand, UK, USA), seven conference papers (Canada, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, UK), two symposiums (London, New York), and four workshops (Aarhus, Detroit, Winnipeg). Public lectures in North America and Europe and four keynotes in Europe.

4. How can didactic instruments help develop and convey tacit architectural knowledge?

Methodology

The typical expectation of academic research is that findings are articulated in a way that can be passed on to others as explicit knowledge.

8


STATEMENT ABOUT THE RESEARCH CONTENT AND PROCESS

Project Highlights

The instruments described in this folio conclude a long period of original practicebased research on design method and representation, sustained for more than two decades. They make a celebrated contribution to the field of experimental architecture, effectively shared with wide audiences in Europe and North America via public lectures, exhibitions and workshops.

Statement of Inclusion of Earlier Work

The work discussed in this folio is the development of an ongoing practice. Some previous instruments are illustrated to contextualise the development of this practice. Instrument Six was modified during the current research cycle to help with the development of Instrument Nine.

9


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Introduction

of interest as they work with a folded picture plane. Artists have often curved the picture plane to make their image appear true to life; at least since Leonardo da Vinci who identified marginal distortions in linear perspective in a line of equal diameter circular columns when using a flat picture plane. The conjecture that started this work was that if this were a viable idea, then the corollary would be that folding the picture plane also provided a critical means of receiving the world. Such a capacity would allow for an active form of representation to discuss how the occupant might take possession of the content of architecture, whatever its prescription. Earlier instruments in this series use optical projection on mechanically adjustable picture planes, with the image captured by photosensitive paper. During the Great Depression, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York hired an architect, James Perry Wilson, as a diorama painter (32). Wilson brought the rigour of architectural perspectival projection to the question of registering an image on a curved diorama background. I built a set of cameras to photograph the original site of one of his dioramas at the Yale Peabody Museum, as well as the diorama itself (7–8). The cameras were specific to that diorama and made Wilson’s calculations through its optics. Although I could understand the mathematics of Wilson’s Dual Grid projection method, building the dedicated cameras provided me with a much deeper tacit knowledge of the issues involved in such projections and the folding picture plane.

The process of designing architecture is typically initiated with a programme, a prediction of what will happen in a certain place and the reasons for building the project. The programme is a necessary instrument but a highly reductive one, for the nature of occupation is dependent on huge variations in the character of the occupants and in circumstance. Providing for the prediction is the basic practical necessity of architecture but not its larger capacity, since the richness of living reaches far beyond prescriptions held in the programme. We are rarely taught how to occupy architecture. We learn through experience, and the architect’s knowledge of how buildings are occupied is largely constructed as tacit knowledge; certainly, the sensibility that allows the architect to translate the programme into a habitable and social space depends partly on this personal knowledge. Michael Polanyi discusses tacit knowledge as the fact ‘that we know more than we can tell’ (Polanyi 1966). This body of research is searching for ways to value indeterminate conditions in architecture and in turn develop methods of constructing tacit knowledge to help us address uncertain circumstances (for if they were certain circumstances, we could employ explicit knowledge). It belongs to an iterative practice with six evolving concerns:

Didactic Instruments

To learn how to build instruments to construct tacit knowledge, I studied a range of didactic instruments from the realm of explicit knowledge, especially in optics, astronomy – planetarium projectors and planetary mechanisms such as the orrery – and natural history dioramas. The latter were

10


INTRODUCTION

4

4 Instrument Ten.

11


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

5

5 Instrument One.

12


INTRODUCTION

6

6 Instrument Two with drawings.

13


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

7

7 Pair of cameras specific to James Perry Wilson’s Cold Bog diorama.

14


INTRODUCTION

8

8 Photographs of original site and Cold Bog diorama.

15


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Projection and Reception

When gunpowder was introduced to Europe from China, the spatial politics of projection shifted and cities were built to a new set of terms. What is relevant to this research from that period is the knowledge held in the tools, and the protagonists, as well as the relationship between projection (siege) and reception (fortifications). Many of the instruments of projective geometry were shared between those operating artillery and the surveyors constructing the earthwork defences. The most noted military engineer of his time, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, spent the second half of the seventeenth century perfecting both the ideal form of fortification and its undoing through his many successful sieges. His understanding of projection fed his knowledge of reception and vice versa. While my early instruments had an active form of reception, their means of projection was generic and needed to become active in the work. Like Vauban, I needed to take possession of both projection and reception to fully understand their dependencies. All instruments from Instrument Four (9) onwards – with the exception of Six and Nine – project latex paint rather than light. Latex paint is a non-Newtonian fluid like blood, which forensic scientists have adopted using digital and analogue methods to work out the narrative that leads to blood splatter (Matisoff and Barksdale 2012).

9 Instrument Four, media test. 10 The four versions of Instrument Five.

16


INTRODUCTION

9

10

11–2 (overleaf) Instrument Ten in action.

17






NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

13

22


INTRODUCTION

14

13 Instrument Seven. 14 Instrument Seven drawing. 15 (overleaf) Instrument Eight in action.

23




NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Projecting Paint Instead of Light

Up until Instrument Seven the picture planes had a single pivot. Instrument Eight had unequal length four-bar mechanisms to modulate the relationship between two detached planes with fixed folds, while the four versions of Instrument Ten have two-part picture planes with fixed figures and folds particular to their character. A tripod chassis holds these main elements along with a few subsidiary elements to help locate each instrument in relation to the others. The main pieces are supported on a track that learns from the optical bench, a structure that is particular to the discipline of the tools it supports while providing adjustment for their position.

In all of the paint throwing instruments, the flying paint is understood as an act of occupation. The catapults to project the paint evolved with each generation of instrument. All are adjustable in several dimensions, and adding or taking away elastic bands modulates their power. The character of each throw – revealed through high-speed flash photography and highspeed or slow-motion cinematography – is unique. It is a helpful balance between control and chance. The catapults for Instrument Ten are the most refined, learning from the previous versions, and each of the four instruments that make up Instrument Ten have two different dedicated paintholding spoons that have been 3D printed to fit the catapults (16). The paint is thrown at a drawing piece. The drawing pieces for the four instruments that make up Instrument Ten (21–5) are a hybrid of figurative 1:6 scale models of the chairs they help design and abstract paint deflectors in place of bodies. When the paint hits the drawing piece it produces splatter. With optical projection, the figure shadow is always captive to the object from which it is cast, even if the folding picture plane distorts that figure. When the paint collides with the drawing piece, the nature of the collision determines the figure of the splatter. In the early flying paint instruments, the picture plane sat behind the drawing piece, the consequence being that the noise of the paint that did not hit the target tended to obliterate the signal of the splatter. From Instrument Seven onwards, the picture plane therefore sits parallel to the trajectory of the paint and collects only the splatter. A side benefit of this adjustment is that it provided a much greater sensitivity to both the folds in the picture plane and the variations in character of the splatter.

16 Paint spoons for Instrument Ten. 17 The 1:6 scale chair model and paint deflectors in place of a person that constitute one of the drawing pieces for Instrument Ten. 18 (overleaf) 3D scan by Thomas Parker of the four versions of Instrument Ten.

26


INTRODUCTION

16

17

27




NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Performance

The instruments are instrumental in practical terms but they also have the appearance of didactic models. Most of them have small figurative scenes relating to the content of occupation under discussion, and are protected from the flying paint by glass domes. These are reminiscent of similar domes in enlightenment didactic instruments, for example in the 1768 painting An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump by Joseph Wright of Derby. The setting out of the instruments that make up Instrument Ten interrogates the nature of nonreciprocal space in three simultaneous drawings, in views seen from different horizons (37–9). The instruments also produce drawings. Like tea leaves left in an empty cup, the splatter is open to a wide range of interpretations. When trying to make sense of these drawings, they have the greatest level of persuasion when read with their corresponding photographs and slow-motion films of flying paint (19, 41).

19

20 Setting a catapult, Instrument Ten.

19 Instrument Ten in action, film still.

30

21–5 (overleaf) Views of the individual instruments that constitute Instrument Ten.


INTRODUCTION

20

31


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

21

32


INTRODUCTION

22

33


23


24


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

36


INTRODUCTION

25

37


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Sciagraphy and Paradoxical Shadows

For thousands of years, architects have teased out the potential of the shadow to emphasise the presence of architecture and this has been reflected in architectural representation through the discipline of sciagraphy: the projection of shadows. The reliability of the physics of light makes the shadow a trusted witness to spatial presence. This agent of certainty can raise doubt when the correspondence between light and shadow is ambiguous, as played out in film noir or the use of chiaroscuro in painting. Although Instruments Two and Three constructed paradoxical shadows, it is during my work with Instrument Five that, quite by accident, I discovered how to make shadows float in mid air. I characterised the assembly to resemble a submarine interior (26) and took a stereoscopic pair of photographs that revealed a strange presence hovering in the middle of the construct. I had taken photographs with a left-eye image, followed by one for the right eye, and each time had used a flash so that there was both a stereoscopic and a sciagraphic parallax, producing a floating shadow. Instrument Six allowed the operator to float shadows at different depths, both in front of and behind the surface on which one would expect the shadow to land. It employed two light sources with polarising filters and a screen that retained the polarisation of light. The observer must wear polarising glasses to match the filters (27). Instrument Nine evolved from these experiments.

38


INTRODUCTION

26

27

26 Stereoscopic photograph of Instrument Five’s submarine interior. Note the parallax of the periscope shadows relative to the round dial to their right. 27 Viewing Instrument Six’s floating shadows with polarising glasses.

39


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Perception and Consciousness

The first version of Instrument Six used candles as a light source. The shadow was dim and some observers were unable to register its appearance. I was able to overcome my initial perception and place the shadow back on the surface on which one would expect it to land. The condition was so marginal that it was possible to mentally move the shadow between the two locations – floating or grounded – simply by siding with either one’s perception or consciousness. The shadow was cast from a deliberately 3D object, yet the floating shadow was resolutely flat. Instrument Nine was built to test the effects of the object and the screen on the form of the shadow. This question is also discussed in the drawing Atlas of Floating Shadows (28), which attempts to determine if the perceptual distance of the shadow from the screen in low-lighting conditions is where it should be geometrically or whether its position is corrupted by one’s consciousness. The variation in levels of illumination and parallax between the light sources also allows a greater range of experimentation than in previous instruments.

28 Atlas of Floating Shadows.

40


INTRODUCTION

28

41


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Aims and Objectives

Questions

The purpose of the instruments is to discuss indeterminate conditions and construct and share tacit knowledge. In this process, the design and development of the instruments is as important as working with them. This process involves incremental design, often building one part of a component before its associate parts are designed, so that each part learns from the last. Although there is much to learn internally from each instrument, cumulatively they develop ongoing lines of inquiry as most of the sets of instruments are also configured to help with the design of a discrete project. The larger project is motivated by a suspicion of the methods and motives that underpin much architectural design and the values that are enshrined in them. The programmes and typologies that are typical in architecture perpetuate reductivist thinking about the potential performance of architecture, which can lead to prescriptive provision of built space to support human activity. We understand how we are supposed to behave in certain types of building, and while this can often be helpful, it is also a form of prescription that is given in advance of occupation. This work asks how the occupant can take possession of a building’s meaning, providing generosity and inclusiveness of sharing content rather than insisting upon what architecture means. As a microcosm, the instruments provide an example of architectural design that implicates the person who is working with them, as well as the viewer who is studying them when exhibited. They balance personal interpretation with a methodological rigour that sits in the realm of critical reflection and evolution, rather than on operational prescription.

Instrument Nine

1. In both our phenomenal experience and representation of architecture, shadows play an important role. If we can disturb the shadow beyond our expectations, how does this affect the presence of architecture? 2. What degrees of influence do object, surface and light source parallax have on the relational performance and perception of a floating shadow? From my point of view, the play between perception and consciousness is the most interesting underlying inquiry that influences the above questions. In the context of optics and the perception of shadows, the work adds a fourth floating condition to Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘attached’, ‘cast’ and ‘shading’ shadows (Kite 2017, p. 5). It also poses the possibility of conditions where presence is dependent on who it is that experiences them.

42


AIMS AND OBJECTIVES / QUESTIONS

29

29 Instrument Nine.

43


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

30

44


QUESTIONS

Instrument Ten

1. How can the terms of architectural projection be reconsidered through the projection of paint rather than light? 2. How can didactic instruments help develop and convey tacit architectural knowledge? As a method, Instrument Ten (30) has reached maturity and, as such, perhaps its end. For as it finds a productive mode, it also risks falling into its own conventions. It is a line of inquiry that has been immensely productive in my research and the sequence of iterations reveal, after reflection on the whole process, a range of explicit lessons in ways to address questions of indeterminacy. The particular thematic questions addressed by Instrument Ten are ongoing, regarding the design of a chair and nonreciprocal space. The latter condition is exemplified in a photograph by Robert Doisneau, Square du Vert-Galant (1950) (31), in which all the characters are spatially implicated to each other but only two are in a reciprocal relationship. It encapsulates a spatial sophistication where associations are not necessarily interdependent or linear, but are none the less present. It is palpable in operational spaces such as Cape Canaveral, where spatial associations are established through an understanding of the relationships, or through the evidence of crime scenes or archaeological sites where spatial construction is activated by the potential of objects or players.

31

30 One of the four instruments that comprise Instrument Ten. 31 Robert Doisneau, Square du Vert-Galant, 1950.

45


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Context

While these lessons were bountiful, this is not the first project to gain nourishment for speculative questions from didactic instruments. Marcel Duchamp’s 3 Standard Stoppages (1913–4) played off the French imperial metre, while in the architectural realm but in the name of rationalism Nikolai Ladovsky built his psycho-technical instruments in his laboratory at Vkhutein.

There are architects who have attempted to reset the inception of architecture to acknowledge a broader set of indeterminate terms. Examples might include the early automatic drawings of Coop Himmelblau or the poetic acts that initiate projects at Open City by teachers from the Catholic University in Valparaiso. These revolutionary practices place the poetic and romantic aspects of architectural inhabitation above other considerations. Alternatively, the work discussed here produces systems that value poetic sensibilities in architecture in such a way that appears to wear the logics, methods and apparatus of the world it critiques. The importance of learning from the tools of explicit knowledge to develop tools for tacit knowledge has been outlined. Planetarium projectors and planetary mechanisms such as the orrery from the field of astronomy were studied, and while looking at projective techniques in habitat dioramas (32), other capacities became apparent. One was that the presentation of explicit knowledge in a literal and figurative presence provides an opportunity for viewers to reconstruct content for themselves as personal knowledge. Another was that the rich embodiment of knowledge in habitat dioramas provides an opportunity to learn what was intended, but also provokes a sense of wonder that ferments into possibilities beyond the specified content.

46


CONTEXT

32

32 Elk diorama at the American Museum of Natural History, New York. Background painting by James Perry Wilson, 1941.

47


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Methodology

1. Operational Methodologies

The early instruments developed a series of folding picture planes as a means of taking possession of an image projected onto that plane. These mechanisms were highly effective but were also entirely predictable. A switch to projecting latex paint in place of optical projection opened up a whole new range of relational possibilities, implicating the operator in a number of ways. The instruments are developed piece by piece. Each component learns from previous versions and the last component to be manufactured. Instrument Nine employed laser-cut and water jet-cut instruments; while the four instruments that make up Instrument Ten used CNC machining (33–6) for as many components as was practicable, so that the incremental process allowed lessons to be carried from piece to pieces, and between equivalent pieces in the most active parts between one instrument and another. Before Instrument One was made, there was a drawing imagining how a series of instruments might work (although these were significantly different from the result). Since then, there is not a single drawing for any of the ten series of instruments that describes neither their production or their performance. This evolutionary process that learns through making has been key to developing the instruments.

Through this body of research, I am placed in a phenomenal relationship with the issue that is being studied, while also learning from didactic instruments in astronomy and the natural sciences. There are two further methodologies employed: one is the construction of tacit knowledge, related to indeterminacy in architecture through developing and working with the instruments; the other relates to the ways in which the predominantly tacit knowledge constructed by the instruments can be shared.

33–6 (overleaf) CNCmachined components for Instrument Ten.

48


METHODOLOGY

33

34

49


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Operating Instrument Ten provides its most vivid form of representation. A typical session is as follows: the four instruments are set up in an arrangement relative to the characters who might occupy the chairs (37–9), and with a sense of the reciprocal and nonreciprocal relationships between them. Protractors on the deck of the instruments hold string tensioned by plumb bobs so that the angle and distance between them can be recorded. The catapult of an instrument is set for line and length, both with the settings on the arm and the number of elastic bands to power the throw. The dedicated paint spoon is loaded with latex paint, and the camera and high-speed flash are placed in position and primed for action (41). The aim of the throw might be compared with the architect’s prediction of how the situation might be occupied. How the paint behaves deviates from this in varied and unpredictable degrees. The action of firing the remote camera cable just after the catapult is charged with intense concentration, as the biting point of the trigger is slightly unpredictable. When the paint has been thrown there are a range of questions: What does the splatter of the paint that has collided with the drawing piece and the picture plane tell us? Did we capture the flying paint in the high-speed photograph, and if so how does the behaviour during the throw compare with the aftermath of the splatter? On average, the camera captured one in three throws of paint, how does the result compare with what was imagined? The use of high-speed flash photography was initiated soon after early trials showed that everything was happening far too quickly to appreciate the processes taking place. High-speed flash photography for research was pioneered by the English physicist Arthur Worthington and was popularised by the MIT professor Harold Eugene Edgerton. I also

employed high-speed cinematography to further understand the throws of paint. The resulting slow-motion films were most revealing of the behaviour of the collisions between the paint and the drawing pieces but the process negated all the experiential benefits of the photographic registration (19). Tests were made at 250, 500, 1,000 and 4,000 frames per second.

50


METHODOLOGY

35

36

51


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

37

37–9 (overleaf) Three simultaneous drawings of the chairs being occupied.

52


METHODOLOGY

38

53


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

39

54


METHODOLOGY

40

40 Chair drawings with Instrument Ten. 41 (overleaf) Instrument Ten set up for paint throwing.

55


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

56


METHODOLOGY

41

57


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

2. Sharing Tacit Knowledge

I open the work to the phenomenal experience of viewers by frequently showing the instruments in public exhibitions (43–9). One of the objectives of this work is to find ways to share research that produces tacit knowledge. An attempt to force a translation of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge risks devaluing it by being overly reductive. Tacit knowledge is powerful in situations of acute sensitivity and multiple variables, the sort of conditions where nuanced understandings are vulnerable if their fullness is abstracted through explanation. Beyond the thematic and conceptual drive of each set of instruments, I ask another question about how their content can be discussed in their own voice while avoiding literary telling. The example of the habitat dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History and the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven (32) – the high point of this type of didactic instrument – suggests their capacity to translate explicit knowledge tacitly to the visitor. This translation is likely to include content that is intended and some that is beyond or even contradictory to those intentions. Patterns of interest and thought become apparent beyond the content of a particular set of instruments through their presence, the evidence they produce – splatter paint drawings, photography and films – and their evolution from one series to the next. For those who choose to engage, a more intense and intimate understanding is available through working with them. As with the dioramas, this transmission of knowledge is to various degrees unreliable and unrepeatable, as is the content they discuss.

58


METHODOLOGY

42

42 Stereo depth registers on Instrument Nine.

59


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Dissemination

Conference Presentations

Solo Exhibitions

· ·

·

·

· ·

Bored Clouds Tickled by Frightened Tornadoes, The Bartlett, UCL (2018) Entreentre Presents Work by Nat Chard and Teis Draiby, Leth & Gori, Copenhagen (2015) Unreliable Sightings of…, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (2015)

Keynote Lectures

· · ·

Group Exhibitions

·

·

Drawing Attention: The Digital Culture of Contemporary Architectural Drawings, Roca London Gallery (2020) DUTIFUL IM/PROPER, College of Architecture and Planning at CU Denver (2020)

·

Publications

· ·

·

·

The University of Edinburgh (2020) Delft University of Technology (2016) The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Copenhagen (2016) Victoria University of Wellington, Venice Biennale (2014)

Invited Public Lectures

·

·

The Bartlett, UCL (2016) McGill School of Architecture, Montreal (2015) Venice Biennale (2014)

· · · · · ·

Nat Chard has authored two chapters that discuss the work, in the books Drawing Futures (2016) and Perspectives on Architectural Design Research (2015); He has written two articles, published in Fresh Meat Journal (2017) and Pidgin (2015); An article by the author is due to be published in the forthcoming publication Cartographies of the Imagination; The work has been discussed in the books Painting Actuality, The Diorama Art of James Perry Wilson (2020) and Architecture and Surrealism (2016); An exhibition review of Entreentre Presents Work by Nat Chard and Teis Draiby featured in Border Crossings (2016).

· · · · ·

Bergen School of Architecture, Norway (2020) Cranbrook Academy of Art, Detroit (2019) RIBA, London (2018); Oxford Brookes University (2017) The University of Edinburgh (2017) Newcastle University (2016) Cork Centre for Architectural Education (2015) Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (2015) University of Brighton (2015) University of Greenwich, London (2015) Aarhus School of Architecture (2014) University of Idaho, Moscow (2014)

Symposium

·

60

Drawing Architecture, New York and London (2019; 2020 postponed due to COVID-19)


DISSEMINATION / PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS

Project Highlights

Invited Workshops

· · · · ·

Aarhus School of Architecture (2020) Cranbrook Academy of Art, Detroit (2019) Cork Centre for Architectural Education (2015) Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (2015) Aarhus School of Architecture (2014)

The instruments described in this folio conclude a long period of original practicebased research on design method and representation, sustained for more than two decades. They make a celebrated contribution to the field of experimental architecture, effectively shared with wide audiences in Europe and North America via the author’s untiring string of public lectures, exhibitions and workshops.

61


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

62


DISSEMINATION / PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS

43

63

43–5 (overleaf) Unreliable Sightings of…, in collaboration with Perry Kulper, at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, 2015.


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

44

64


DISSEMINATION / PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS

45

65


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

46

47

66


DISSEMINATION / PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS

48

49

67


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Bibliography Kite, S. (2017). Shadow-Makers: A Cultural History of Shadows in Architecture. London and New York: Bloomsbury. Matisoff, M. and Barksdale, L. (2012). ‘Mathematical and Statistical Analysis of Blood Stain Splatter’. The Forensic Examiner. 21 (1). pp. 26–33. Polanyi, M. (2009). The Tacit Dimension. University of Chicago Press.

46–9 (previous) Bored Clouds Tickled by Frightened Tornadoes, in collaboration with Perry Kulper, at The Bartlett, UCL, 2018.

68


BIBLIOGRAPHY / RELATED PUBLICATIONS

Related Publications by the Researchers Chard, N. (2015). ‘Floating Shadows’. Pidgin: Magic. 19. Princeton University School of Architecture. pp. 82–95. Chard, N. (2015). ‘Searching for Rigour While Drawing Uncertainty’. Maloney, J., Smitheram, J. and Twose, S. eds. Perspectives on Architectural Design Research. School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington. pp. 122–7. Chard, N. (2016). ‘Paradoxical Sciagraphy’. Allen, L. and Pearson, L. eds. Drawing Futures: Speculations in Contemporary Drawing for Art and Architecture. London: UCL Press. pp. 149–54. Chard, N. (2017). ‘Instrument Ten’. Fresh Meat Journal: Fake Fiction. Chicago: School of Architecture at the University of Illinois. pp. 10–8.

Related Writings by Others Aquino, E. (2016). ‘Nat Chard and Perry Kulper’. Border Crossings. pp. 156–7. Buxton, P. (2019). ‘Step into the Changing World of Drawings’. The RIBA Journal. 30 September. GrØnbœk, N. (2015). ‘Overview of the Excluded’. Friis, A., Gamborg Knudsen, K. and Petersen, F. eds. ENTREENTRE. pp. 19–23. Sayer, J. (2019). ‘How are Architects Drawing in the World of Digital Culture?’. The Architect’s Newspaper. 17 October.

Printed article

Online article (clickable link)

69


NAT CHARD

INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN

Image Credits

Bartlett Design Research Folios

All images © Nat Chard, unless otherwise stated.

ISSN 2753-9822

Nat Chard and Perry Kulper Scan: Thomas Parker 31 © Robert Doisneau 32 Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History Library Services. Photo: Nat Chard 43–5 Photo: Bill Eakin 1, 46–9

© 2022 The Bartlett School of Architecture. All rights reserved.

18

Text © the authors Founder of the series and lead editor: Yeoryia Manolopoulou Edited by Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Barbara Penner, Phoebe Adler Picture researcher: Sarah Bell Additional project management: Srijana Gurung Graphic design: Objectif Layout and typesetting: Siâron Hughes Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of the material reproduced in this publication. If there have been any omissions, we will be pleased to make appropriate acknowledgement in revised editions.



BARTLETT DESIGN RESEARCH FOLIOS

2022 SERIES

Design for Learning AY Architects

Poikilokydric Living Marcos Cruz

Life of Clay Guan Lee

Audialsense Paul Bavister

Warsaw Karowa Bridge DKFS Architects

Flood House Matthew Butcher

Photosynthetic Architecture ecoLogicStudio

Digital Manual Guan Lee, Daniel Widrig

Instruments Nine and Ten Nat Chard Coworking Spaces Izaskun Chinchilla Architects Organic Growth Pavilion Izaskun Chinchilla Architects TransDisciplinary PostDigital FrAgility Marjan Colletti + REX|LAB

Discrete Timber Architecture Gilles Retsin LA Futures Smout Allen

Kew House Tim Lucas

Infractus Smout Allen

Losing Myself Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Níall McLaughlin

A Register of User Adaptations Storp Weber Architects

Oxford Projects Níall McLaughlin Architects

Uncovering Casa Sperimentale Storp Weber Architects

High Street Regeneration Jan Kattein Architects

Funicular del Tibidabo Miàs Architects

Oxford North Jonathan Kendall

The Cloud Miàs Architects

Cork Construction Oliver Wilton, Matthew Barnett Howland

Hakka Cultural Park Christine Hawley, Abigail Ashton, Andrew Porter, Moyang Yang

Alga(e)zebo mam

55/02 sixteen*(makers)

Chong Qing Nan Lu Towers mam

Envirographic and Techno Natures Smout Allen

City of Ladies Penelope Haralambidou Discrete Methods for Spatial Robotic Extrusion Manuel Jiménez García, Gilles Retsin

Playing the Picturesque You + Pea

2015 SERIES

Bloom Alisa Andrasek, José Sanchez House of Flags AY Architects Montpelier Community Nursery AY Architects Design for London Peter Bishop 2EmmaToc / Writtle Calling Matthew Butcher, Melissa Appleton River Douglas Bridge DKFS Architects Open Cinema Colin Fournier, Marysia Lewandowska The ActiveHouse Stephen Gage Déjà vu Penelope Haralambidou Urban Collage Christine Hawley

House Refurbishment in Carmena Izaskun Chinchilla Architects Refurbishment of Garcimuñoz Castle Izaskun Chinchilla Architects Gorchakov’s Wish Kreider + O’Leary Video Shakkei Kreider + O’Leary Megaframe Dirk Krolikowski (Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners) Seasons Through the Looking Glass CJ Lim Agropolis mam

ProtoRobotic FOAMing mam, Grymsdyke Farm, REX|LAB Banyoles Old Town Refurbishment Miàs Architects Torre Baró Apartment Building Miàs Architects Alzheimer’s Respite Centre Níall McLaughlin Architects Bishop Edward King Chapel Níall McLaughlin Architects Block N15 Façade, Olympic Village Níall McLaughlin Architects

Hydrological Infrastructures Smout Allen Lunar Wood Smout Allen Universal Tea Machine Smout Allen British Exploratory Land Archive Smout Allen, Geoff Manaugh 101 Spinning Wardrobe Storp Weber Architects Blind Spot House Storp Weber Architects

Regeneration of Birzeit Historic Centre Palestine Regeneration Team

Green Belt Movement Teaching and Learning Pavilion Patrick Weber

PerFORM Protoarchitecture Lab

Modulating Light and Views Patrick Weber


Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.