ScottishArchitecture.com

As with previous exhibitions in the National Programme the Lighthouse organised a one-day seminar in conjunction with the 6000miles exhibition. While the last exhibition's seminars focused primarily on a further exploration of the exhibition's themes the intention for the 6000miles seminar was to concentrate on the actual exhibition itself. 

This was done on two different but inter-related levels. On the first level the five participating practices presented and discussed their specific proposals and thematic explorations shown in the exhibitions. And on the other level, the presentations and discussion focused on the method of the exhibition that had a strong research element to it and in which the exhibition is used as a laboratory to speculate about future developments.

The contributors to the exhibition were therefore asked to talk about their approaches to the exhibition project, about their research methodology and findings, as well as about the final proposal and the form in which it was presented in the exhibition. The presentations encompassed therefore, both the process and the result and put both in relation to the question of the exhibition as a continuation of the architectural or design praxis. In addition to the five practices invited, national and international speakers put those specific responses into a wider geographical and thematic context.

The speakers of the 6000miles seminar were:

• Dr Stuart MacDonald, director of The Lighthouse, Glasgow
  
• Christine de Baan, Head of Exhibitions of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam
  
• Eelco Hooftman, GROSS.MAX Landscape architects, Edinburgh
  
• Dorian Wisniewski, Wisznieswki Thomson Architects, Musselburgh
  
• Gordon Murray and Reiner Novak, gm+ad architects, Glasgow
  
• Graeme Williamson, block architecture, London
  
• Ross Hunter, Graven Images, Glasgow
  
• Emily Richardson, artist and filmmaker, London
  
• Bjarke Ingels, PLOT architects, Copenhagen
  
• Riccardo Marini, City Design Leader of the City of Edinburgh Council
  

Session 01

Stuart MacDonald opened the seminar with an introductory talk in which he spoke about the general questions and problems of exhibiting architecture and mediating it to a general public – “Who are architecture exhibitions for?” He referred to the work and success of The Lighthouse in this field over the last five years since its opening. He pointed out that the role of exhibitions was the creation of knowledge which would have to be of value to politicians, professionals, academics, and the general public alike. He stressed that The Lighthouse and exhibitions like 6000miles were particularly engaged in democratising architecture through the process of exhibition making and that exhibitions should hence have a “subversive educational agenda” as the Dutch critic and curator Baart Lootsmaa had put it.

Christine de Baan, who was also chairing the event, presented the forthcoming Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam “THE FLOOD” that is dealing, although on a different level and with a broader agenda, with a similar theme as 6000miles. She likened the approach of the 6000miles exhibition with that of the Rotterdam Biennale, which is made up of a set of research exhibitions that are each curated by individual curators and for which new work has been commissioned. These exhibitions are exploring, among other things, coastal tourism (MARE NOSTRUM, that will also feature an edited version of 6000miles), or housing and its relation to water (FLOW).

Eelco Hooftman of GROSS.MAX started the presentations of the five practices participating in the exhibition. He acknowledged that GROSS.MAX had approached the 6000miles project with “megalomaniac confidence – and failed gloriously”, although that referred only to the ‘iceberg’ they had installed in the exhibition and which melted after the exhibition opening. He explained that the incentive for the approach to their project “Global Warming/Local Freezing” was grounded in Scotland’s historic and contemporary achievements of manipulating nature which he compared to his work as a landscape architect. He also spoke of his fascination of the visual observations of the Enlightenment and the important role Scottish scientists like James Hutton had played in it. It was Hutton who discovered ‘geological time’, that the world is constantly changing, with no beginning and no end. Hooftman referred to Hutton’s view of the “world as an instrument”, as a machine, and made the reference to the coastal machines of the 6000miles exhibition.

Dorian Wiszniewski’s told the audience that the approach that he and his partner Honor Thomson took in recreating the lost marine gardens at the seaside town of Portobello was prompted by the washed up remains of the fireworks that illuminated the skies on Guy Fawke’s night, the rocket rods with their names of exotic flowers that formed, as he expressed it, “an astral-aquatic choreography” between shore and the sea. He called it a “joyful experiment” that allowed them to develop not only a general strategy for the town but also concrete proposals for specific places. He pointed out that the main aim of their approach and the final project was to “create something beautiful yet with no purpose other than to delight”, hence challenging the economic correlation between leisure and consumption.


Gordon Murray presented in tandem with project architect Reiner Novak their proposal for the soon to be redundant ferry terminal in Stranraer. Gordon Murray described Stranraer as “a paradigm for post-industrial Scottish coastal towns”. Like Dunoon with a naval base in demise, Campbeltown without fishing or knitwear industry, the loss of the Belfast ferry will terminate the town’s role as a gateway to Scotland. With the size of pier infrastructure bigger than the actual town centre the situation was exemplary of “a country with a bountiful land supply”. He referred to a workshop discussion on the Leith waterfront were he suggested that “rather than reclaiming land … one could return the coastline to its original topography thereby reinstating biodiversity … as well as revitalizing properties currently in the hinterland of the harbour”. Reiner Novak continued in explaining a similar approach that the office took for 6000miles where the pier would be severed from the mainland, divided into little allotment-style islands and given to the local population, hence creating “a machine of hope” and a “distinguished and unique feature” for the town and the surrounding area.


Graeme Williamson started with explaining his unique, dual role as being a contributor to the exhibition, as well as being responsible for the exhibition design. He further reflected on the term coastal machines that, as he put it, “have also been intrinsically tied to the iconography of change, hope and the future”. He linked the coastal machine to the history of the manmade maritime structures, as Geoffrey Stell had described them in the 6000miles exhibition catalogue. Graeme then explained how block architecture developed one type of such maritime structures – the piers and jetties that extend the land into the sea - into a response for the actual exhibition where a recreated wooden jetty connects the individual contributions in a “series of moored light boxes evoking the street lights of settlements” that are seen from the ships at night. Their exhibition project, which he described as “a proposal that isn’t necessarily factual or fictional, but somewhere in the middle, almost realisable”, also borrowed from the idea of the jetty, of connecting land and sea, by creating an archipelago of a series of inhabitable platforms in the Kyle of Lochalsh.

In the case of the Tarlair lido, the site examined by Graven Images, Ross Hunter claimed, “The structure of the lido left architecturally nothing to do. The site and the object were almost perfect.” He continued to elaborate on their focus on the fortunes and misfortunes of the local and Scottish fishing industries and the relation, or the lack of it, that the people in Scotland have with the excellent produce that comes out of this important part of Scottish coastal living. The arguments he put forward for proposing a “Sashimi Machine” in the Tarlair lido were on a general level about promoting healthy living and eating. But foremost their argument responded to both legalistic and economic issues around the question of protected fishing grounds. He further explained that for Graven Images, in this project, the brand “Sashimi Machine” was indeed the architecture, which opposed, as he argued, “the rather more tedious and commonplace opposite of the architecture as brand."


Session 02

The second session was opened by Emily Richardson who explained that the film “Petrolia”, shown on three screens in the 6000miles exhibition, was a progression of previous works which all had a strong relationship to the landscape and its transformation over time. Normally shown independently and in an art environment, the crucial question for her was how “Petrolia” would be sitting and received within an architecture exhibition like 6000miles. She considered that, although her work on the films showed a different approach than the exhibited architectural projects, they had a similar interest in issues like place, time and transformation. To illustrate these points she showed two previous films, first “Redshift” and then “Aspect”, a year long, time-lapse chronicle of a forest in Kent, as well as a part of “Petrolia”. She explained that a major motive of her films was to make things visible that are normally not seen because we do not have the patience to look long enough.

Bjarke Ingels presentation shifted the context from a Scottish perspective to a wider international view. PLOT’s research of projects in Denmark gave an insightful comparison between two small countries in Europe with a close relation to their respective coastlines. He started by showing “Superharbour”, a film that had been part of the research and the exhibition “Too Perfect – Seven New Denmarks”. The starting points of the project, that had been shown at three parallel venues, including the 2004 Architectural Biennale in Venice, were seven “extreme economics” that asked questions like “What if … Denmark would provide one Superharbour replacing not only all Danish harbours but all harbours in the Baltic sea?” or, referring to the other project proposed by PLOT, “What if … Denmark would have an energy bill of zero?” He explained how both proposals were both visionary but also exploiting already available technology. He continued by showing a number of built projects and competitions that all had a relation to the water and the coast, including a youth and sailing club and the proposal for a swimming opera in Copenhagen.

Riccardo Marini argued the case for the importance of imaginary projects like 6000miles that were necessary to develop creativity and ideas that went beyond the “Fordism that took over modern planning and the way we produce our cities.” He claimed that it was “nonsense to say the architecture adds value” but that “architecture is value”. He advocated the significance of exceptional buildings as expressions of creativity necessary for ‘place-making’. He warned, however, not to make the mistake of purely cloning such creative expressions, or “fingerprints” as he called them, as this uncontextual repetition would create more problems for the city then it could solve.

Discussion

The final round table discussion gave the speakers, as well as the audience, the opportunity to explore a number of issues that were raised or which, at this point, had not been expressed in the presentations. Two issues seemed to be of crucial significance in this context. On a methodological level it was the question and importance of disseminating a research process, as well as a final exhibition product like 6000miles, to a wider audience, or as it was put “to the unconverted”, of engaging a broader variety of effected groups ranging from local communities to policy makers, from researchers and scientists in other disciplines, to the construction industry. On a more general level, the question of Scotland’s identity and self-image in relation to the future development of its built and natural environment, not only along its 6000 mile coastline, was paramount. It was suggested that devolution had instigated a “rediscovery” of Scotland and that the coastline might be seen as an indicator of this process as it would signify Scotland’s relationship to the wider world. However, Scotland’s tendency to belittle its own ambitions as well as achievements, the aim of “being the best small country” as Eelco Hooftman had already paraphrased it in his presentation, was criticised in this context. The panel strongly advocated the need for architecture and architects to engage in this wider process of rediscovery or reinvention and the research in the field of architecture and planning, whether through academia, exhibitions like 6000miles, or indeed more architectural competitions, was seen as being of great importance. Getting a necessary supporting structure that would, for instance, put a proper funding system for architectural research in place was discussed, the Dutch model was mentioned here. The implementation of a strategic plan for Scotland going beyond the verbal promotion of better architecture as documented in the Scottish Architecture Policy was considered a matter for political decision making.


Florian Kossak