At The Bartlett School of Architecture, we have been publishing annual exhibition catalogues for each of our design-based programmes for more than a decade. Our Design Anthology series brings together the annual catalogue pages for each of our renowned units, clusters, and labs, to give an overview of how their practice and research has evolved. Throughout this time some teaching partnerships have remained constant, others have changed. Students have also progressed from one programme to another.
Now with almost 50 units, clusters and labs in the school across our programmes, the Design Anthology series shows how we define, progress and reinvent our agendas and themes from year to year. Idiosyncrasy in architecture and urbanism assumes many forms.
The projects that fly in the face of reason are modern-day wunderkammern β crammed with randomly juxtaposed curiosity and with varying degrees of validity, they could empower the disenfranchised by embracing equality, diversity and identity. Idiosyncrasy also comes in the form of micro-nations: the Vatican City inside Rome, the Principality of Sealand and the Danish island of Elleore, for example. Locations of cities and communities can be equally eccentric and illogical. Tehran, Los Angeles, Kolkata, Tokyo, Jakarta and New Orleans all face a constant threat of potential calamity from earthquakes, monsoons, floods or tsunamis.
Our idiosyncratic weather and seasons can also be treated as resources. No two hotels are the same. From the river the ice came and to the river it shall return; all that remains are memories. Whether by bold environmental gestures or by subtle entrepreneurial spirit, our love affair with the city and its architecture is constantly rewritten.
In the process, we build a fundamentally different idea of society at different times and in different places. Idiosyncrasy is the interruption and provocation of everyday lives and routines through imaginative redefinitions of caution and logic. In partnership with Amazon, Flyme and the UK government, the proposal sees a reimagined Southampton Airport embrace the Covid pandemic to redefine current notions of travel and retail for those choosing to remain grounded within the UK.
