Welcome to The

Centre for Experimental Practice (EXP)

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 and Professor Murray Fraser, 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.

           

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.

To give an idea of the scope of subject areas being covered within the Experimental Practice (EXP) cluster, here is a sample of recent outputs by staff members contributing to the group:

 

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• Barber, P. (with Peter Barber Architects), Spring Gardens Hostel, St Mungo’s Association, Lewisham, London, 2009.
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• Colletti, M. & Cruz, M., Interfaces-Intrafaces, Vienna/New York: Springer, 2007.
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• Difford, R., ‘Infinite horizons: Le Corbusier, the Pavilion de l’Esprit Nouveau dioramas and the science of visual distance'</    em>, The Journal of Architecture, vol. 14 no. 3, June 2009, pp. 295-324.
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• Golzari, N., masterplan for new sustainable urban park in Hamedan, Iran, 2008 onwards.
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• Goodbun, J., ‘Marx Matters: Aesthetics, technology and the spirit of matter’, in Lloyd Thomas, K. (ed.), Material Matters: Architecture and Material Practice, London/New York: Routledge, 2007, pp. 67-78.
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• Griffiths, S. (with Fashion-Architecture-Taste), Heerlijkheid Park and associated pavilions, Hoogvliet, The Netherlands, 2009.
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• Griffiths, S. & Jencks, C. (eds.), AD: Radical Post-Modernism (special guest edited issue of Architectural Design), London: Wiley/Academy, 2010 – to which Kester Rattenbury is also contributing.
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• McLean, W. & Silver, P., Introduction to Architectural Technology, London: Laurence King, 2008.
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• Martin, A. & Yau, A. (with Urban Future Organization), winners of HOLCIM sustainability prizes for Mulini Valley Water Power Project, Amalfi, Italy, 2006.
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• Rattenbury, K. & Fraser, M. (eds.), Archigram Archival Project website, launch March 2010.

    

Current projects within EXP include:

Supercrits
Groundbreaking projects of past and present in expert critical debate
Visit the Supercrits page

The Archigram Archive
Online catalogue of the work of the iconoclastic architecture group.
Visit the Archigram Archive page

 

Click on the above links for further details on each of these aspects

Staff active in the EXP research cluster:


Dr Kester Rattenbury (coordinator)

Peter Barber

Dr Marjan Colletti

Richard Difford

Nasser Golzari

Jon Goodbun

Sean Griffiths

Will McLean

Andrei Martin

Andrew Yau



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