Experimental Practice

The Experimental Practice (EXP) cluster carries out research into innovative approaches for the design of buildings and cities and imaginary or polemical proposals.

Part of EXP’s research work is historical, looking back at those architects who in the past few decades have become well-known for their radical and experimental designs. A major AHRC-funded project carried out by EXP staff has put online the entire output of Archigram so that it is freely accessible for the first time to architects, scholars and students. Known as the Archigram Archival Project, and led by Dr Kester Rattenbury, the resulting website includes over 8,000 drawings,photographs, films, written texts and other ephemera by the Archigram group.

The website provides the largest and most focussed online collection of its kind, or of a single design group, anywhere in the world. Another key EXP initiative is the unique and widely acclaimed series of Supercrit events that have looked retrospectively at projects like Cedric Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt, Venturi and Scott Brown’s seminal text on Learning from Las Vegas, Richard Rogers’ Pompidou Centre, Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette, Rem Koolhaas’s book on Delirious New York, and Leon Krier’s masterplan for Poundbury in Dorset. Other events are being planned in the Supercrit series, including one on Moshe Safdie’s 1967 Montreal Expo Habitat housing scheme, scheduled to be held in New York in collaboration with the Storefront Gallery, and another on James Stirling’s Staatsgalerie Museum, to be held in London in collaboration with the Architecture Foundation, both during 2010.Cruz

The other side of EXP is an astonishing series of new projects which range from speculative designs like David Greene’s ‘Invisible University’, to the parametric digital schemes by Andrei Martin and Andrew Yau of Urban Future Organization, to the ‘Nurbster’ installations by Dr Marjan Colletti of marcosandmarjan architects, through to major built projects by the likes of Peter Barber or Sean Griffiths in the spheres of housing, education and community provision. Jon Good bun is one of those exploring new conceptual frameworks and design strategies for sustainable design. Meanwhile, Nasser Golzari has been working in the same field but exploring these questions through a variety of projects in Iran and the Palestinian West Bank. Will McLean has written a number of well-received books on aspects of building technology, especially in relation to the fabrication and assembly of components.

In terms of built projects within the EXP research cluster, Peter Barber was awarded ‘Housing Architect of the Year’ by Building Design in 2008 for his highly praised projects such as the RIBA Award-winning Donnybrook Quarter in Bow, East London, which only narrowed missed the Stirling Prize shortlist. Barber has also been setting new governmental standards for the design of homeless hostels, such as in his scheme for Spring Gardens Hostel in Lewisham, South London. Sean Griffiths, working with his practice Fashion-Architecture-Taste, has won RIBA European Design Awards for Sint Lucas Art Academy in Boxtel and Heerlijkheid Park in Hoogvliet, both in The Netherlands. Griffiths has also been appointed as Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architecture at Yale University.

A great help to publicising the work of the Experimental Practice cluster has been the opening of the P3 Ambika Gallery in the basement of Westminster’s Marylebone Campus. This unique venue has been used for a wide variety of art and design exhibitions, including those on architecture, and indeed Barber, Colletti, Martin and Yau have all shown work in this space. Further exhibitions are in the planning stage.

EXP supports staff engaged in a wide range of experimental practice, including parametric digital schemes by Andrei Martin and Andrew Yau, and major, award-winning built work by Peter Barber and by Sean Griffiths. Other staff members working in this area are Jon Goodbun, exploring new strategies for sustainable design; Nasser Golzari, working on Iran and the Palestinian West Bank, and Will McLean, publishing work relating to fabrication and the assembly of components.

Current projects

Supercrits

Groundbreaking projects of past and present in expert critical debate

The Archigram Archive

Online catalogue of the work of the iconoclastic architecture group.

Staff

For further information on the Experimental Practice cluster, please contact
Dr Kester Rattenbury on k.rattenbury@westminster.ac.uk