Sutton Scarsdale Hall, The pavilion of post-contemporary curating
If the Sun and Moon Should Doubt/They’d immediately go out William Blake
This proposal will be based around three successive phases of projects: infrastructural / experimental / intervention. The ethic in which we approached our proposal was this: conversations, dialogues, and exchanges of chats. It is most of all, a narrative. The following texts highlighted in italics were our discussion notes, and gives a personal definition and a peripheral view of how we came to our decisions. We view these, in some ways, as notes towards future curatorial possibilities.
The beauty of the Sutton Scardsale Hall ruins lies uniquely in the present stasis it finds itself, as it weathers in irony: a destitute place of some former, middling significance. It speaks as a flume to the past – even, if so, a vaguely provincial one. Architecture has a way of keeping itself pertinent by the advantage of time. If not successful in its own era, given enough years for immediate critics to die, thoughts, manners, and social mores are wont to be seen with a nostalgic light, through the comforting opacity of recollection. History is partly propelled by such allegiances to the romanticism; and romanticism to ruined architecture seems to be under a predominant stewardship of the British spirit. Chaucer spoke of the Romans in Canterbury; Hardy snuffed a number of his characters in old manors and land sites; the Poets wrote of figures that erected monuments to their undying (and long dead) selves.
The aristocratic heritage of Scarsdale Hall falls under the category of such things to be honoured for maintaining partial verticality. In a sense, the ruins are a perfect staging ground for a contemporary discourse for it not being a particularly well-known heritage site. Its history resides in written tracts of passing deeds and changing of estates, though not much more than that. Most buildings that have lasted centuries aren’t necessarily great: in such light, most things that are still standing and not demolished are recipients, in some way, of a lifetime achievement award. Utilizing the Sutton ruins as a venue for artistic programmes will give it a meaningful rebirth.
We see there are two important elements to any proposal for the reinvention of Sutton. First is to maintain the history of the Hall for its structural appearance in its current state, particularly the façade of the manor. It is our preference to keep the design of the Hall essentially en plein air, and in effect, highlight this remarkable attribute to a certain extent. The second is to approach the ruins as a reoccupation of the interior spaces, with a fully detailed programme of actions. Instead of restrained insertions we plan to make a series of more significant interventions following a period of investigation by means of a number of “projects” working with others to understand better how the spaces can be occupied, utilised, and how visitors interact with these approaches. Most of all, the design will be open-ended as to its purpose and its meaning. Not one thing we propose is dictating permanence per se, but are meant to be added to, reduced from, and ultimately collected as an ongoing narrative in the collective history of the Hall, through differing means of cultural engagement and dissemination.
BA: I also thought about the idea of narrative. As in seeing our use of these structures as something on-going. Continuous re-use. It is also striking that this particular structure is actually a false ruin in some ways. Although it is more than a couple of centuries old is was made into a ruin in a very purposeful way - and then even restored as a ruin. We are continuing this purposeful narrative - by making a series of stories each somehow (possibly indirectly referencing one another). I was thinking and talking with Ricardo of a series of proposals each becoming more concrete and permanent - that could each relate to one of these themes that we are discussing - but together tell a very invented continuation of the storey of the building.
DV: By being able to consider all of the ruined spaces as a whole we can create a better harmony between exterior and interior. In doing this we risk loosing an understanding of the original architecture - but by carrying out these alterations purely on, say the floor and at high level and the occasional obvious realignment of an interior opening, we are also open about the game that is being played - and adding an additional layer to the fabric itself (as opposed to making architectural interventions that can be removed). We could see it as an all or nothing approach. First we experiment with the spaces with temporary devises and then we intervene in a more permanent manner. By making the interventions public projects it is a very open dialogue - intended to challenge people and also be informed by how people use the spaces during the course of the several projects.
RG: Other interesting themes to consider in this vein is the consideration of older structures as actually more dynamic spaces than those that are of, say, our generation - historically speaking. It is also interesting to consider what is the difference, if any, between a ruin which is 300 years old and a warehouse which is 40 years old? Is it the lack of obvious purpose that draws us to these structures - the tactility of the materials, the proportion and scale, the dilapidation or the connection to the past. On the last note I wonder if it can be slightly schizophrenic. Perhaps for some an existence surrounded by old buildings enables a sheltering from the present. I find that it may allow a more open embrace of the future. It is perhaps no coincidence that many films that consider the future do so from a (usually dilapidated) historical setting.
DV: I wonder if the success of these projects will lie not only in the investigation of what activities will be best suited to this building, and indeed the spaces themselves, but in a deeper understanding of what exactly is the attraction of historical buildings to us and in particular what is the attraction of this building. I think that the wider question goes far beyond the nostalgia of the past to which these buildings act as wormholes. The exploration of this theme could perhaps be a curatorial driving force as well as an architectural one in the investigation and reuse of the spaces.
BA: On another note, it would be fascinating to involve someone such as Julian Harrap - a restoration expert (worked on the Neues Museum in Berlin) - who has increasingly radical views on dealing with historical buildings to join this dialogue. There could also be an interesting link here with some of the younger generation of Berlin artists, who have grown up in a city that was once almost totally ruined and have witnessed the witnessed the wholesale refurbishment, restoration and rebuilding of their city in the last 20 years and many of whom are critical of the way in which this has been carried out.
State of Nature, revisited
The fact that the Hall has no weather protection is not lost upon us. It is in some ways Hobbes’ inescapable nightmare in the Leviathan, of what polite society desperately tries to hide (and not necessarily very well): only a non-leaking roof separates society from becoming a self-serving beast in the state of nature. Considering the roof was pilfered by American businessmen in 1919 -1920, we want to remain faithful to the history of the structure by imagining an equally absurdist proposition as a temporary quick-fix: an aeriform roof. The main central and easterly spaces are covered with a series of translucent, inflatable balloons. In order to add functionality and shelter for the subsequent projects, we propose to construct a roof over a number of the principal spaces. This membrane will create an hermetic component to the structure, and serve as an inference of the organic. The exact shape or form and materiality of these is the first project. They are the first step in the process of the re-imagining of the building volumetrically.
We imagine this as a way to limn both the social and the natural elements that the Hall. Though the balloon will create coverage from the physical elements of precipitation, its clear skin will reflect the course of light as it rises and falls throughout the day. We can design the balloons as either a singular bladder which exactly fits the space over which it spans, or a modular system of smaller inflatables. They might be movable so that the volumes (and acoustics) of the spaces can be altered according to need. They could protrude out of the top of the building or bulge out of the first floor windows, in excess. We consider it important that the spaces (for now) remain exposed.
We intend for the scale and form of these structures to act as a precursor to later projects, which may consider constructing a permanent roof over some of the spaces. In this way the balloons will form part of the future narrative of the building long after they are gone. This first step in the proposal is a general intervention, a simple one utilizing elementary means. As such, the inflatable’s/balloons are transient solutions – or a clear statement of non-permanence.
Following the creation of a roof structure, we see the reworking of the flooring plan as the second most crucial undertaking in the success or failure of the earliest stages of the Hall’s replanning. The basis for this project is a series of permanent interconnected paths and floors connecting all the Hall’s spaces - one, when accomplished, will create a unifying platform for various art practices to take place. Various concepts that could be explored would be the implementation of a central, possibly radial, geometry that would envisage the paving of the whole building with one pattern but only be visible in the elements of the path (as fixing the viewer in a plein air maze or the focal point of a tessellation). Another possibility is to study the falling aspect of the sun and its shadow through the windows, and using this physical actuality to orient the organizational “flow” of the floor’s geometry.
Our design follows a central axis fundamental to one of math’s great questions, the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture: every elliptical curve has a modular form. Whether it is the person enacting the space by navigating through it, or by using the sun to proscribe the area for us, the floor will be vivified by the necessity of equal pairing. Preferably, we would link the geometry to that of one of the later phases of the built elements we hope to achieve. The floor, in the beginning stages of construction, can be seen simply as a visual palimpsest – a geometric base for a future, central pivot to the Hall.
JB: The way I see it, the space of the ruins is dead air. Historically, as well as socially. This proposal is not so much about curating and repurposing an unused relic as it is about figuring out what to do with a troublingly sedentary remnant of western history. This is dealing with a cousin you don’t quite remember after not seeing him for decades. In this way, the absurdity of our concept and the absurdity of the ruins history is what should be highlighted – or the immediate facts. The ruins, at one time, was a seat of provincial power. But somehow, I am inclined to see this project will do best thought as creating a disco in a morgue.
RG: It reminds me Mendes da Rocha’s idea that architecture only appears when its function has ceased. Or maybe they’re contradictory - I appreciate structures that have no inherent function, that is, their qualities are indeed spacial in a more abstract manner (from the viewer’s perspective). That also means they are more concrete.
In any case, our difficulty in working with heritage is probably a very recent thing... look at Portugal - nearly every building, including monuments, were either recovered, rebuilt and even extended during the dictatorship (in the 40s).
BA: I very much like the idea that only redundant structures or those that have been re-appropriated have this (secondary or more in depth) level of meaning. It is a theme that is hugely challenging to contemporary Europeans - since we are increasingly re-appropriating all of our built environment. It was something that was also very much on my mind in Lisbon. We almost have a guilt about our love of living in the ruins that surround us (which is almost everything) and if we were to conceptualise the idea of the reuse of these structures - or better identify what draws us to them perhaps it will become more relevant outside of Europe. It also can be a way of connecting what we are proposing here to a wider context.
Studio visit (Beehive)
Our second intervention envisages an artists in residence programme, between mid Spring and early Autumn each year, inviting artists to work on the grounds of the Hall. We are firm believers in placing the Hall as a place for study and engagement with other artists, but also as place where architects, artists, and curators can potentially participate in the ongoing design of the Hall, in a way a bee relates to its central hive – the organic process of cross-referencing varying ideas will lead to the continued vitality of the ruins. We see the residency as one of hymenopteran activity. This structure will give each resident the option to add their own chapter in the continuing narrative of the Hall: the residency programme is not only an artistic platform but a very real opportunity to undertake, as social theorists like John Searle, would deem, the “construction of social reality” – a socially edifying experience. As part of our proposal, we also would like to implement a two year project in conjunction with journal Paper Monument documenting the residency programme and its creative output, in the possible form of Paper Monument’s stand-alone “pamphlet” series.
It is our hope that not only visual artists, but also varying artists –writers, architects, and musicians to name a few– can be candidates for the residency programme. We imagine the residency to be akin to that of fellowship positions at organizations like the Getty Research and Open Society Institutes, where each fellow is accorded two interns to assist in their work-stay.
Resident housing will be designed in the Hall. Into the western spaces of the building, we would like to implement several prefabricated cabins that exist either on stilts or beams. Temporary scaffold stairs and gantries would grant access and connect the dorms through the existing door openings at the first floor level. The cabins (customised with roof lights and windows matching the buildings) would act as live/work spaces and the remaining parts of the building would also be utilized as a work space/gallery for the artists to use. We also suggest placing temporary banked seating in the central space thus giving the option of turning it into a performance space, a lecture hall, or a general communal area. This further adds to the idea of filling the Hall with structures that promote activity – music, lectures, dramatic staging’s, or a place for communal dinner are some possibilities.
A more ambitious proposal would be to design the cabins as studio spaces only, and the living accommodation for each artist would be a trailer in the car park adjacent to each cabin. A separate stair will connect each artist’s trailer to their assigned studio space. This slightly futuristic/off-kilter arrangement of this set up is purposeful. The visual busyness of artists moving from ruins to studio to shelter is an advertisement, an outward sign, of the creative activity taking place within. We cannot help to view the first residents as but settlers, in the early founding of a small community at Sutton Scarsdale Hall. The living arrangements will be sparse, but with basic comforts. The rawness of the space necessarily will reflect the artistic temperaments of those wishing to gain residency at the Hall. We suggest to keep the residency programme inline with the general rough-hewn appearance of the buildings – artists who will want to come to Sutton Scarsdale Hall will be ones who know exactly what it means to be here. In essence, this idea is a creative rethinking of Friedman’s ideas on infrastructure and social mobility, restricted to the scale and sociological history of the Hall – utopia resides only in the agent’s urge to find such places in the present world around them. In wanting to find the Edenic, we will rely on the handsome dishabille of the Hall to help cipher these empathetic minds towards it.
RG: Can you imagine the rush of masons (or art students) climbing around and occupying the spaces, building a new world… Maybe a school, or some sort of seminar over a period of time, with lecturers and a squatting community. One could see this arrangement as a street, a village, a movie set, or a construction site. Undoubtedly, artists will be playing the role of experiencing the spaces and reinterpreting their own needs from it, potentially intervening at an architectural level if need be. The artists and their needs –as well as the programming- will define the resident units and their design. What I imagine in some ways is a shanty town of sorts, generated by profusion of ideas about self-organised social structures. An alternative society.
BA: Resident housing reminds me about similar re-appropriation of historic structures such as the Colosseum in Rome which for hundreds of years had people living within it’s walls - also the idea of streets in the sky. This is the most experimental phase – seeing what and how the building works best. The artist in residence part has a utopian attitude... Scaffold stairs and gantries that all interconnect to another’s.
JB: I was thinking about the different residency programmes that I’m aware of, and how disparate they all were. They border on super-luxe, like the Getty, where you’re on a hillside fortress overlooking the ocean, or Schloss Solitude where you’re in a Rococo castle. This strategy won’t work for Sutton – and I think that’s the interesting part. It’s close, in some respect, to the Chinati Foundation residency in Marfa, Texas, where you stay in a reclaimed barrack of a reclaimed military base during your stay.
The Sutton will have such Spartan appeal. Like Chinati, which is in the middle of the Sonoran desert (an isotropic environment if there ever was one), this sort of environment will recruit certain sensibilities: those that aren’t necessarily there purely for art, but to simply be in an alien locale, and revelling in solitude; a solitude that necessarily isn’t about isolation.
Not Ideas About the Thing, But the Thing Itself
The final phase in our reenvisaging of Sutton Scarsdale Hall is an evolution of the previous interventions. The temporary cabins, enclosures, stairs and ramps, would be transformed into elements of a larger structure, part of an ongoing densification of the space. Literally, the result could be a mass of structures emerging from the central spaces and growing from the activities within.
Though we began by examining the usual examples of classic western architecture akin to the Hall, our thoughts would eventually find their way to those architecture/ architects operating at the edges of what we can only describe as transcendental irreality: the unfinished monastery of Batalha, Portugal, Cedric Price’s unrealized Fun PalaceHouse, Yona Friedman’s Villa Spatiale, the metaphysical architecture of Étienne-Louis Boullée, to name only but a few. None of these mentioned projects or theories were fully achieved in practice in their respective times: in the extreme case of Boullée, it would most likely have been a violation of his ideals to remotely consider construction. If this were the hypothetical case, the paradoxical nature of Boullée’s architecture, (and in some fashion, also Friedman and Price’s works), then, is tantamount to this: the most meaningful and ideal architecture is about it not being real architecture at all.
For the last stage of the Hall’s reorganization, we want to create a structure that reflects upon these architectural concerns - one that brings into tangibility Boullée’s notion of the impossible form, while managing to bridge it with a design of pre-existing functionality. We propose a structural reimagining of the Hall by addition of a vast central structure – a pyramid conflated with the inverted design of the classic Indian step well – a compound element that simultaneously exposes as much as it encloses, and provides a means by which one can navigate to the summit of the building, or even above it. Starting at the entrances and circumnavigating towards the roof, the path will end at the finality of the unimpeded sky above; the step well design would create a visual spiral from the periphery towards the centre space, in the manner of Corbusier’s Infinite Museum. Its outer dimensions will be integrated against the ruin’s walls, and perhaps might even extend below existing floor level and provide access to the cellars below.
The functions of the building could either float as cloud like boxes above or be embedded within this form. Its outer dimensions will be integrated against the ruin’s walls. This landscape could be contained within the central space or extend into other spaces. The geometry of this might be a generator for the path/floor that would be initiated as part of the earlier project.
Part of the reason we chose the pyramid design was for the immediate visual effect the shape would eidetically create. An equally important consideration was for what the notion of a pyramid represents: its shape is universally totemic, as it is monumentally vague – a glimpse, or a further embellishment of possible utopia. The pyramid, for transcendental purposes, was one Boullée designed but never accomplished in real life; it was not meant for physical actuality. Factoring in the years when Boullée accomplished his most visionary designs happened alongside the footfalls of the French Revolution, his pyramid stands as a marker of hope on the edges of uncertainty. All or nothing. Our pyramid for Boullée, in essence, is a purposeful violation of his admirable principles; but this violation can be a sense of completion, for our current society to interpret its own readings of utopia.
Exit
The opportunity to reimagine Sutton Scarsdale Hall will not happen over night. With our proposal, we at least hope to give it a clean start by utilizing a temporary roof and define the floor plan, which we believe will allow stability for our other programmes (like the artist residency) to find beginnings.
The unique setting of Sutton dictates so much of what we can do; the history of the place, however parts of it lost and forgotten, is what has managed to help preserve it. However, in the light of our own age, we would be remiss in simply celebrating history for history’s sake. Our design is in its own way a conflation of the past and present, of making what happened then and what we can do now equal partners. The pyramid form, then, is a cipher that bridges this distance for us, without being indebted to either age. The iconicity of its shape precedes us all. For our purposes, it was also our main narrative device in our proposal, in a crescendo of Borgesian simplicity: a dénouement without a practical dénouement. This proposal tells a narrative with no fixed ending, a story that itself is modular. Sequences can be altered, changed, modified, reduced. This is the ethic –however rough- we hope to instil in the future livelihood and fruition of Sutton Scarsdale Hall.
Project by Ben Allen, James Bae, Jan Bünnig, Ricardo Gomes, Jeff Schwartz and Daniel Valente
Sutton Scarsdale Hall, The pavilion of post-contemporary curating
If the Sun and Moon Should Doubt/They’d immediately go out William Blake
This proposal will be based around three successive phases of projects: infrastructural / experimental / intervention. The ethic in which we approached our proposal was this: conversations, dialogues, and exchanges of chats. It is most of all, a narrative. The following texts highlighted in italics were our discussion notes, and gives a personal definition and a peripheral view of how we came to our decisions. We view these, in some ways, as notes towards future curatorial possibilities.
The beauty of the Sutton Scardsale Hall ruins lies uniquely in the present stasis it finds itself, as it weathers in irony: a destitute place of some former, middling significance. It speaks as a flume to the past – even, if so, a vaguely provincial one. Architecture has a way of keeping itself pertinent by the advantage of time. If not successful in its own era, given enough years for immediate critics to die, thoughts, manners, and social mores are wont to be seen with a nostalgic light, through the comforting opacity of recollection. History is partly propelled by such allegiances to the romanticism; and romanticism to ruined architecture seems to be under a predominant stewardship of the British spirit. Chaucer spoke of the Romans in Canterbury; Hardy snuffed a number of his characters in old manors and land sites; the Poets wrote of figures that erected monuments to their undying (and long dead) selves.
The aristocratic heritage of Scarsdale Hall falls under the category of such things to be honoured for maintaining partial verticality. In a sense, the ruins are a perfect staging ground for a contemporary discourse for it not being a particularly well-known heritage site. Its history resides in written tracts of passing deeds and changing of estates, though not much more than that. Most buildings that have lasted centuries aren’t necessarily great: in such light, most things that are still standing and not demolished are recipients, in some way, of a lifetime achievement award. Utilizing the Sutton ruins as a venue for artistic programmes will give it a meaningful rebirth.
We see there are two important elements to any proposal for the reinvention of Sutton. First is to maintain the history of the Hall for its structural appearance in its current state, particularly the façade of the manor. It is our preference to keep the design of the Hall essentially en plein air, and in effect, highlight this remarkable attribute to a certain extent. The second is to approach the ruins as a reoccupation of the interior spaces, with a fully detailed programme of actions. Instead of restrained insertions we plan to make a series of more significant interventions following a period of investigation by means of a number of “projects” working with others to understand better how the spaces can be occupied, utilised, and how visitors interact with these approaches. Most of all, the design will be open-ended as to its purpose and its meaning. Not one thing we propose is dictating permanence per se, but are meant to be added to, reduced from, and ultimately collected as an ongoing narrative in the collective history of the Hall, through differing means of cultural engagement and dissemination.
BA: I also thought about the idea of narrative. As in seeing our use of these structures as something on-going. Continuous re-use. It is also striking that this particular structure is actually a false ruin in some ways. Although it is more than a couple of centuries old is was made into a ruin in a very purposeful way - and then even restored as a ruin. We are continuing this purposeful narrative - by making a series of stories each somehow (possibly indirectly referencing one another). I was thinking and talking with Ricardo of a series of proposals each becoming more concrete and permanent - that could each relate to one of these themes that we are discussing - but together tell a very invented continuation of the storey of the building.
DV: By being able to consider all of the ruined spaces as a whole we can create a better harmony between exterior and interior. In doing this we risk loosing an understanding of the original architecture - but by carrying out these alterations purely on, say the floor and at high level and the occasional obvious realignment of an interior opening, we are also open about the game that is being played - and adding an additional layer to the fabric itself (as opposed to making architectural interventions that can be removed). We could see it as an all or nothing approach. First we experiment with the spaces with temporary devises and then we intervene in a more permanent manner. By making the interventions public projects it is a very open dialogue - intended to challenge people and also be informed by how people use the spaces during the course of the several projects.
RG: Other interesting themes to consider in this vein is the consideration of older structures as actually more dynamic spaces than those that are of, say, our generation - historically speaking. It is also interesting to consider what is the difference, if any, between a ruin which is 300 years old and a warehouse which is 40 years old? Is it the lack of obvious purpose that draws us to these structures - the tactility of the materials, the proportion and scale, the dilapidation or the connection to the past. On the last note I wonder if it can be slightly schizophrenic. Perhaps for some an existence surrounded by old buildings enables a sheltering from the present. I find that it may allow a more open embrace of the future. It is perhaps no coincidence that many films that consider the future do so from a (usually dilapidated) historical setting.
DV: I wonder if the success of these projects will lie not only in the investigation of what activities will be best suited to this building, and indeed the spaces themselves, but in a deeper understanding of what exactly is the attraction of historical buildings to us and in particular what is the attraction of this building. I think that the wider question goes far beyond the nostalgia of the past to which these buildings act as wormholes. The exploration of this theme could perhaps be a curatorial driving force as well as an architectural one in the investigation and reuse of the spaces.
BA: On another note, it would be fascinating to involve someone such as Julian Harrap - a restoration expert (worked on the Neues Museum in Berlin) - who has increasingly radical views on dealing with historical buildings to join this dialogue. There could also be an interesting link here with some of the younger generation of Berlin artists, who have grown up in a city that was once almost totally ruined and have witnessed the witnessed the wholesale refurbishment, restoration and rebuilding of their city in the last 20 years and many of whom are critical of the way in which this has been carried out.
State of Nature, revisited
The fact that the Hall has no weather protection is not lost upon us. It is in some ways Hobbes’ inescapable nightmare in the Leviathan, of what polite society desperately tries to hide (and not necessarily very well): only a non-leaking roof separates society from becoming a self-serving beast in the state of nature. Considering the roof was pilfered by American businessmen in 1919 -1920, we want to remain faithful to the history of the structure by imagining an equally absurdist proposition as a temporary quick-fix: an aeriform roof. The main central and easterly spaces are covered with a series of translucent, inflatable balloons. In order to add functionality and shelter for the subsequent projects, we propose to construct a roof over a number of the principal spaces. This membrane will create an hermetic component to the structure, and serve as an inference of the organic. The exact shape or form and materiality of these is the first project. They are the first step in the process of the re-imagining of the building volumetrically.
We imagine this as a way to limn both the social and the natural elements that the Hall. Though the balloon will create coverage from the physical elements of precipitation, its clear skin will reflect the course of light as it rises and falls throughout the day. We can design the balloons as either a singular bladder which exactly fits the space over which it spans, or a modular system of smaller inflatables. They might be movable so that the volumes (and acoustics) of the spaces can be altered according to need. They could protrude out of the top of the building or bulge out of the first floor windows, in excess. We consider it important that the spaces (for now) remain exposed.
We intend for the scale and form of these structures to act as a precursor to later projects, which may consider constructing a permanent roof over some of the spaces. In this way the balloons will form part of the future narrative of the building long after they are gone. This first step in the proposal is a general intervention, a simple one utilizing elementary means. As such, the inflatable’s/balloons are transient solutions – or a clear statement of non-permanence.
Following the creation of a roof structure, we see the reworking of the flooring plan as the second most crucial undertaking in the success or failure of the earliest stages of the Hall’s replanning. The basis for this project is a series of permanent interconnected paths and floors connecting all the Hall’s spaces - one, when accomplished, will create a unifying platform for various art practices to take place. Various concepts that could be explored would be the implementation of a central, possibly radial, geometry that would envisage the paving of the whole building with one pattern but only be visible in the elements of the path (as fixing the viewer in a plein air maze or the focal point of a tessellation). Another possibility is to study the falling aspect of the sun and its shadow through the windows, and using this physical actuality to orient the organizational “flow” of the floor’s geometry.
Our design follows a central axis fundamental to one of math’s great questions, the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture: every elliptical curve has a modular form. Whether it is the person enacting the space by navigating through it, or by using the sun to proscribe the area for us, the floor will be vivified by the necessity of equal pairing. Preferably, we would link the geometry to that of one of the later phases of the built elements we hope to achieve. The floor, in the beginning stages of construction, can be seen simply as a visual palimpsest – a geometric base for a future, central pivot to the Hall.
JB: The way I see it, the space of the ruins is dead air. Historically, as well as socially. This proposal is not so much about curating and repurposing an unused relic as it is about figuring out what to do with a troublingly sedentary remnant of western history. This is dealing with a cousin you don’t quite remember after not seeing him for decades. In this way, the absurdity of our concept and the absurdity of the ruins history is what should be highlighted – or the immediate facts. The ruins, at one time, was a seat of provincial power. But somehow, I am inclined to see this project will do best thought as creating a disco in a morgue.
RG: It reminds me Mendes da Rocha’s idea that architecture only appears when its function has ceased. Or maybe they’re contradictory - I appreciate structures that have no inherent function, that is, their qualities are indeed spacial in a more abstract manner (from the viewer’s perspective). That also means they are more concrete.
In any case, our difficulty in working with heritage is probably a very recent thing... look at Portugal - nearly every building, including monuments, were either recovered, rebuilt and even extended during the dictatorship (in the 40s).
BA: I very much like the idea that only redundant structures or those that have been re-appropriated have this (secondary or more in depth) level of meaning. It is a theme that is hugely challenging to contemporary Europeans - since we are increasingly re-appropriating all of our built environment. It was something that was also very much on my mind in Lisbon. We almost have a guilt about our love of living in the ruins that surround us (which is almost everything) and if we were to conceptualise the idea of the reuse of these structures - or better identify what draws us to them perhaps it will become more relevant outside of Europe. It also can be a way of connecting what we are proposing here to a wider context.
Studio visit (Beehive)
Our second intervention envisages an artists in residence programme, between mid Spring and early Autumn each year, inviting artists to work on the grounds of the Hall. We are firm believers in placing the Hall as a place for study and engagement with other artists, but also as place where architects, artists, and curators can potentially participate in the ongoing design of the Hall, in a way a bee relates to its central hive – the organic process of cross-referencing varying ideas will lead to the continued vitality of the ruins. We see the residency as one of hymenopteran activity. This structure will give each resident the option to add their own chapter in the continuing narrative of the Hall: the residency programme is not only an artistic platform but a very real opportunity to undertake, as social theorists like John Searle, would deem, the “construction of social reality” – a socially edifying experience. As part of our proposal, we also would like to implement a two year project in conjunction with journal Paper Monument documenting the residency programme and its creative output, in the possible form of Paper Monument’s stand-alone “pamphlet” series.
It is our hope that not only visual artists, but also varying artists –writers, architects, and musicians to name a few– can be candidates for the residency programme. We imagine the residency to be akin to that of fellowship positions at organizations like the Getty Research and Open Society Institutes, where each fellow is accorded two interns to assist in their work-stay.
Resident housing will be designed in the Hall. Into the western spaces of the building, we would like to implement several prefabricated cabins that exist either on stilts or beams. Temporary scaffold stairs and gantries would grant access and connect the dorms through the existing door openings at the first floor level. The cabins (customised with roof lights and windows matching the buildings) would act as live/work spaces and the remaining parts of the building would also be utilized as a work space/gallery for the artists to use. We also suggest placing temporary banked seating in the central space thus giving the option of turning it into a performance space, a lecture hall, or a general communal area. This further adds to the idea of filling the Hall with structures that promote activity – music, lectures, dramatic staging’s, or a place for communal dinner are some possibilities.
A more ambitious proposal would be to design the cabins as studio spaces only, and the living accommodation for each artist would be a trailer in the car park adjacent to each cabin. A separate stair will connect each artist’s trailer to their assigned studio space. This slightly futuristic/off-kilter arrangement of this set up is purposeful. The visual busyness of artists moving from ruins to studio to shelter is an advertisement, an outward sign, of the creative activity taking place within. We cannot help to view the first residents as but settlers, in the early founding of a small community at Sutton Scarsdale Hall. The living arrangements will be sparse, but with basic comforts. The rawness of the space necessarily will reflect the artistic temperaments of those wishing to gain residency at the Hall. We suggest to keep the residency programme inline with the general rough-hewn appearance of the buildings – artists who will want to come to Sutton Scarsdale Hall will be ones who know exactly what it means to be here. In essence, this idea is a creative rethinking of Friedman’s ideas on infrastructure and social mobility, restricted to the scale and sociological history of the Hall – utopia resides only in the agent’s urge to find such places in the present world around them. In wanting to find the Edenic, we will rely on the handsome dishabille of the Hall to help cipher these empathetic minds towards it.
RG: Can you imagine the rush of masons (or art students) climbing around and occupying the spaces, building a new world… Maybe a school, or some sort of seminar over a period of time, with lecturers and a squatting community. One could see this arrangement as a street, a village, a movie set, or a construction site. Undoubtedly, artists will be playing the role of experiencing the spaces and reinterpreting their own needs from it, potentially intervening at an architectural level if need be. The artists and their needs –as well as the programming- will define the resident units and their design. What I imagine in some ways is a shanty town of sorts, generated by profusion of ideas about self-organised social structures. An alternative society.
BA: Resident housing reminds me about similar re-appropriation of historic structures such as the Colosseum in Rome which for hundreds of years had people living within it’s walls - also the idea of streets in the sky. This is the most experimental phase – seeing what and how the building works best. The artist in residence part has a utopian attitude... Scaffold stairs and gantries that all interconnect to another’s.
JB: I was thinking about the different residency programmes that I’m aware of, and how disparate they all were. They border on super-luxe, like the Getty, where you’re on a hillside fortress overlooking the ocean, or Schloss Solitude where you’re in a Rococo castle. This strategy won’t work for Sutton – and I think that’s the interesting part. It’s close, in some respect, to the Chinati Foundation residency in Marfa, Texas, where you stay in a reclaimed barrack of a reclaimed military base during your stay.
The Sutton will have such Spartan appeal. Like Chinati, which is in the middle of the Sonoran desert (an isotropic environment if there ever was one), this sort of environment will recruit certain sensibilities: those that aren’t necessarily there purely for art, but to simply be in an alien locale, and revelling in solitude; a solitude that necessarily isn’t about isolation.
Not Ideas About the Thing, But the Thing Itself
The final phase in our reenvisaging of Sutton Scarsdale Hall is an evolution of the previous interventions. The temporary cabins, enclosures, stairs and ramps, would be transformed into elements of a larger structure, part of an ongoing densification of the space. Literally, the result could be a mass of structures emerging from the central spaces and growing from the activities within.
Though we began by examining the usual examples of classic western architecture akin to the Hall, our thoughts would eventually find their way to those architecture/ architects operating at the edges of what we can only describe as transcendental irreality: the unfinished monastery of Batalha, Portugal, Cedric Price’s unrealized Fun PalaceHouse, Yona Friedman’s Villa Spatiale, the metaphysical architecture of Étienne-Louis Boullée, to name only but a few. None of these mentioned projects or theories were fully achieved in practice in their respective times: in the extreme case of Boullée, it would most likely have been a violation of his ideals to remotely consider construction. If this were the hypothetical case, the paradoxical nature of Boullée’s architecture, (and in some fashion, also Friedman and Price’s works), then, is tantamount to this: the most meaningful and ideal architecture is about it not being real architecture at all.
For the last stage of the Hall’s reorganization, we want to create a structure that reflects upon these architectural concerns - one that brings into tangibility Boullée’s notion of the impossible form, while managing to bridge it with a design of pre-existing functionality. We propose a structural reimagining of the Hall by addition of a vast central structure – a pyramid conflated with the inverted design of the classic Indian step well – a compound element that simultaneously exposes as much as it encloses, and provides a means by which one can navigate to the summit of the building, or even above it. Starting at the entrances and circumnavigating towards the roof, the path will end at the finality of the unimpeded sky above; the step well design would create a visual spiral from the periphery towards the centre space, in the manner of Corbusier’s Infinite Museum. Its outer dimensions will be integrated against the ruin’s walls, and perhaps might even extend below existing floor level and provide access to the cellars below.
The functions of the building could either float as cloud like boxes above or be embedded within this form. Its outer dimensions will be integrated against the ruin’s walls. This landscape could be contained within the central space or extend into other spaces. The geometry of this might be a generator for the path/floor that would be initiated as part of the earlier project.
Part of the reason we chose the pyramid design was for the immediate visual effect the shape would eidetically create. An equally important consideration was for what the notion of a pyramid represents: its shape is universally totemic, as it is monumentally vague – a glimpse, or a further embellishment of possible utopia. The pyramid, for transcendental purposes, was one Boullée designed but never accomplished in real life; it was not meant for physical actuality. Factoring in the years when Boullée accomplished his most visionary designs happened alongside the footfalls of the French Revolution, his pyramid stands as a marker of hope on the edges of uncertainty. All or nothing. Our pyramid for Boullée, in essence, is a purposeful violation of his admirable principles; but this violation can be a sense of completion, for our current society to interpret its own readings of utopia.
Exit
The opportunity to reimagine Sutton Scarsdale Hall will not happen over night. With our proposal, we at least hope to give it a clean start by utilizing a temporary roof and define the floor plan, which we believe will allow stability for our other programmes (like the artist residency) to find beginnings.
The unique setting of Sutton dictates so much of what we can do; the history of the place, however parts of it lost and forgotten, is what has managed to help preserve it. However, in the light of our own age, we would be remiss in simply celebrating history for history’s sake. Our design is in its own way a conflation of the past and present, of making what happened then and what we can do now equal partners. The pyramid form, then, is a cipher that bridges this distance for us, without being indebted to either age. The iconicity of its shape precedes us all. For our purposes, it was also our main narrative device in our proposal, in a crescendo of Borgesian simplicity: a dénouement without a practical dénouement. This proposal tells a narrative with no fixed ending, a story that itself is modular. Sequences can be altered, changed, modified, reduced. This is the ethic –however rough- we hope to instil in the future livelihood and fruition of Sutton Scarsdale Hall.
Project by Ben Allen, James Bae, Jan Bünnig, Ricardo Gomes, Jeff Schwartz and Daniel Valente