SLASH: Paper under the knife (Author: David McFadden) features the work of Sara Shafiei and Ben Cowd.

 The book was published to accompany the travelling exhibition by the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York.

link to amazon.co.uk

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Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands:

192-page full-colour hardback publication

Authors:

Sara Shafiei & Ruairi Glynn

Book design:

Emily Chicken

Editor:

Joanna Lee.

Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands is a collection of provocative projects from a young generation of digitally enabled designers. This publication oscillates between the analog and the digital, from concept to realisation, mapping processes as it explores the diverse digital paths that lead innovative spaces, poetic narratives and social interactions.

The book covers a spectrum of London’s leading graduates and young practices, featuring projects from the Architectural Association, Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), University of Westminster and Royal College of Art, and case studies and interviews with architects including Amanda Levete Architects, Plasma Studio, JDS Architects, sixteen* (makers), Horhizon, marcosandmarjan, Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Philip Beesley, David Greene, Samantha Hardingham, Usman Haque and Neil Spiller.

To purchase this book please visit:

http://www.passagesthroughhinterlands.com/

Sara Shafiei and Ben Cowd’s project ‘The Crown of Esfahan’ was praised by Rachel Cook in a special episode of the Culture Show about this years Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

Leicester School of Architecture students James Flynn and Ashley Clayton exhibit at the Royal Academy.
Tutors: Sara Shafiei & Ben Cowd

link to RA summer Exhibition

Students tutored by Sara Shafiei and Ben Cowd at the Leicester School of Architecture (De Mntfort University) win student prizes:

Leicester and Rutland Society of Architects Prize:

Best graduating Part 2 Student (BArch) Richard Isslieb

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Best Performance by a non graduating student award

5th Year: Simon Davies & Ashley Clayton

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Peter Elderfield Award

This award is given to a student who has investigated, in a design project or thesis with a focus on housing, issues of social sustainability, re-definition of the social housing type, the notion of ‘home’, spatial quality within dwelling and its connection to the urban context, and to have offered a critique of current theories and orthodoxies.

6^Th year

Richard Isslieb

Manpreet Bassan

Joseph D’Abbro

5^th year:

Richard Bailey (House for Wax-maker);

Ashley Clayton (House for a Magician)

3^rd Year:

Rebecca Smith

Gareth Patrick

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David Nesbitt Prize

Ashley Clayton

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Adiyan Prize

Simone PLASSARD (BA final year)

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Ibstock Award For Best use of digital technology

Alex Taylor

Ibstock Award For Best Best model/ drawings

James Flynn & Ashley Clayton

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RIBA East Midlands Student Low Carbon Award

Richard Isslieb

Ashley Clayton’s project ‘The Magician’s Workshop and Practice Hall , George IV Bridge, Edinburgh’ is nominated for 3D Reid Prize 2010

Ashley is a student at the Leicester School of Architecture (De Montfort University) and tutored by Sara Shafiei and Ben Cowd

 MAD Book: Foro Romano, Rome

The book was commissioned by the Museum of Art and Design (MAD) in New York for the SLASH: Paper under the knife Exhibition and Publication. The content of the book was a continuation of the project: Solar Topographies.

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L.A.W.u.N (Locally Available World unseen Networks) Projects made by IU faculty members:  David Greene, Samantha Hardingham, Rowan Mersh, Theo Spyropoulos, Shin Egashira, Isabel Peripherique, Edwin Kendall.

Text & Images: Samantha Hardingham and David Greene/The Invisible University; digital photography and imagery by Kevin Shepherd and Sara Shafiei

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Theatre for Magicians, Rome

Author: Sara Shafiei

Under the tuition of Dr Marjan Colletti and Dr Marcos Cruz

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'Like all else in the world, magic cannot stand still.

It must either advance with the times, or fall behind them.

And, in this connection, the one quality which above all others

Is essential to progress is novelty.

Without novelty in some form or other, nothing can be achieved in the way of progress.

[But Magic] inventions are not derived from accidental ideas, happy thoughts,

or heavenly born revelations.

Their origin is in the fact that inspiration, and always endeavoring to imagine novel combinations and novel applications of familiar devices.’

The Great Magician Nevil Maskelyne (1912)

The project attempts to portray how magic and illusion can become an inherent part of the architectural design, which foregrounds the engagement of the user in the building.

The proposal begins by exploring how Harry Houdini’s ‘Vanishing Elephant’ trick is manifested within Albrecht Dürer’s ‘cone of light and vision’ to merge showmanship, optics and illusion.

The resultant building, a Theatre for Magicians, is located in the National Botanical Gardens in Rome.

The building is situated at the peak of the site with picturesque views overlooking the site. The structure of the building is rooted in excess baroque ornamentation. The laser cutter is harnessed to create the detailed pattering on the façade of the building, allowing light to filter through the skin, creating a ‘glowing’ theatre in the hills, enticing visitors inside.

The use of perspectival illusions (such as text and cone anamorphosis) aid in the creation of a landscape of deceptions, whose ornamental tectonics are revealed to the dynamic spectator.

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Anamorphic Tectonics

Author: Sara Shafiei

Under the tuition of Dr Marjan Colletti and Dr Marcos Cruz

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‘The spectator makes the picture.’

Marcel Duchamp

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Anamorphosis is ‘a distorted projection or representation of an image on a plane or curved surface, which, when viewed from a certain point, or as reflected from a curved mirror, appears regular and in proportion; a deformation of an image.’ (Webster’s Dictionary)

Anamorphosis can be seen to use perspective constructions to create a “trick”. The viewer is presented with something that does not make sense when viewed conventionally, and so they must seek out the unconventional viewpoint in order to resolve the “trick”. Therefore, anamorphosis becomes a secret, in which the search and discovery of images became an act of magic.

In order to unravel an anamorphic image, the subject’s relationship to the object of vision much be altered. As Dan Collins suggests in Anamorphosis and the Eccentric Observer, ‘For the viewer to observe anamorphic image they must become an “eccentric observer,” an observer who is willing to sacrifice a centric vantage point for the possibility of catching the uncanny’.

From a traditional point of view, sculpture and architecture ‘implicitly endorse an observer willing to link conventional profiles of an object into a flawless and harmonious progression.’ There are very few designs, which break away from this mould. Borromini’s Colonnade in the Palazzo Spada in Rome, and Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza represent the inverse of the norm, as their architecture insists on establishing a hierarchy of views that favor a specific vantage point. This form of design allows the viewer to become part of the process of creating an image, therefore becoming an inherent part of the final product.

It is for the possibility of this outcome, that anamorphosis is used as a tool of illusion in the architectural proposal.

Here, anamorphosis is used on the façade of the theatre. The façade holds the distorted anamorphic image, and the cone (which intersects the façade) becomes the plane, which reveals the true image.

As there are no traditional signs around the site to navigate visitors, visitors must explore the landscape and architecture before them to unravel its secrets. The anamorphic cone within the façade reflects the words BOX OFFICE, when the cone is viewed from the correct vantage point. In this case the “secret perspective” is positioned at the top of the grand stone staircase.