Observation and analysis are types of invention. They make things
apparent which perhaps were invisible. By noticing, drawing and
naming something we bring it into being. On the other hand,
building and making can be thought of as analytical observations,
pointing out what had not been so clear before and revealing the
potential for other actions yet to occur. This book is a collection
of urban research and architectural projects by award-winning
architects Nigel Bertram / NMBW Architecture Studio, using
observation as a design tool and design as an observational method.
Through this process, a position on the making of architecture and
on the role of architecture within the wider urban environment is
established; embracing the full messy reality of the present,
finding delight in the everyday and developing sensitivity to a
range of found environments. By taking pre-existing conditions
seriously, each project, architectural or analytical, large or
small, becomes understood as the strategic renovation of a
continuing state. This method of working operates by thinking
simultaneously at different scales, from furniture to structure and
infrastructure, searching for combinations of what might normally
be separated into different categories, moving between the many
small and ad-hoc actions of individuals to wider systems of
collective organisation. Thinking about the effects of small moves
on the larger urban field (and vice-versa), the role of unplanned
or uncontrolled events in relation to the inward focus of design;
thinking about the combinatory effect of what is newly made with
what is already there, for example, enables architecture and the
city to be understood in relative terms - in terms of
relationships. Between people, groups of people, things, and parts
of things, actions and groups of actions: urban architecture is the
social arrangement of activity with the physical arrangement of
large and small parts of its environment. But what people do also
changes the place in which they do it. Considering different scales
and types of relationships between individuals and groups, insiders
and outsiders, expected and unexpected actions can be a way of
crossing categories and establishing new relations. Breaking down
components of a given situation or brief, before re-grouping, can
be used to flatten and redistribute hierarchies embedded within.
Similarly, finding ways of carefully observing things just as they
are in the present, helps to see around the presuppositions of
familiarity, without worrying about cause or effect. These aims,
techniques and thoughts are presented through the discipline of the
architectural project, where precise strategies must in the end be
found to define an exact physical arrangement and materiality,
usually at minimum cost. This collection of works researches the
manner in which such precision can also generate openness and
indeterminacy, allowing and provoking the engagement of others.
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