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"Future Relics’" project in collaboration with the Bartlett School of Architecture
21 November 2024
Over 100 Architecture students participated in this project to explore ‘ways of seeing', focusing on the relationship between the forces that shape buildings and those that shape the Earth’s surface, a fusion of anthropogenic creativity and 4.54 billion years of history.
When I first received an email from The Bartlett School of Architecture in September asking about the idea of using our collection to provide a nucleation point for their year one module ‘Design Projects’, I was unsure what this might entail. Initially, I considered the only connection between Geology and Architecture to be in the form of building materials and foundations relating to bedrock. However, I was told previous year’s projects had been centered around objects from both the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and so I was keen to find out more about the project idea as well as show off the fantastic collection that we have here in the department.
When the module coordinators arrived, they were amazed by our collection and the potential it harboured. They explained to me that their idea for the project would explore ‘ways of seeing’, namely the relation between the forces that shape buildings and those that shape the Earth’s surface, a fusion of anthropogenic creativity and 4.54 billion years of history.
Joe Paine, the Earth Sciences Collection Curator, explains the aims of this project: Students would have the chance to ‘pick’ a specimen which would serve as a repository of interpreted knowledge, from which they would siphon a key quality (e.g. colour) and transform it into a new piece that would aim to amplify, accentuate or augment that chosen quality. The idea being to teach them skills to practice architecture and give them an understanding of how to use those skills imaginatively in different contexts – i.e. not just relating Geology to what façade you might use on a building or what granite worktop looks best. I thought this to be a great idea, and what a novel way to use our collection.
It was therefore set in stone that our collection would be used for their investigations. And so, under the title ‘Future Relics’, the project took shape, meaning that this term I have been working on a collaboration with The Bartlett and over 100 of their first year students, along with their tutors and technicians.
In groups of 10 students at a time, along with their tutors, they came into our collection room and were allowed to open drawers and choose specimens that appealed to them. In this way, each specimen takes on its own identity from which each student can personally interpret. Their inquisitive nature and artistic curiosity brought about many increasingly unique and thoughtful questions, whereby every aspect of the collection was scrutinised, leaving nothing safe from the rigour of architectural analysis - quite literally no stone was left unturned. Whether it be regarding the formation of botryoidal minerals such as malachite, living rocks in the form of stromatolites, what can be learned from slickensides or the peculiar nature of cone-in-cone structures, a whole textbook of geological themes were explored. It was at this point that I realised how much I had forgotten since completing my degree, and it was therefore as much of a learning experience for me as it was them. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the opportunity to take part in this transdisciplinary inquisition.
We subsequently ran a number of handling sessions, here in the Kathleen Lonsdale Building as well as The Bartlett, where clay and alginate were (carefully) used to take impressions of their specimen from which they could produce casts. Students were especially engaged here and demonstrated their budding architectural vision as they could see their ideas begin to take shape.
At the end of October I was invited to attend the ‘Future Relics’ project review, granting me an opportunity to see what work had been done so far. Although I had little to say in the way of imaginative critique and analysis, no surprises there, I left the dissection to the trained architects, I was genuinely blown away by how innovative the students had been in response to our collection. It was also here where I discovered what true architectural practice is, learning to look beyond the obvious into the unseen and often absurd.
One demonstration saw a piece of margarine deformed by a rig aiming to mimic geological deformation, another a threshing board comprising megalodon tooth casts designed to separate cereals from their straw, and my personal favourite, a beautifully designed helmet exhibiting a variety glasses lenses at various heights in order to simulate what it might be like to sit inside and look out of a crystal.
The final project submission is at the end of January, and I am excited to see the students' results. Hopefully, our department will be able to display some of the finished work, with the possibility of a summer exhibition to showcase the symbiotic relationship and harmonious integration between the ancient and the contemporary.
Article written by Joe Paine.