The two projects created for the exhibition discuss two forms of reality: ‘the constructed and the revealed’. The installation oscillates between the scientific reality of Howard’s painstaking conservationbased stratigraphy and a fictionalised representation of that knowledge through the use of historic colour windows placed at key locations within the East Wing. The actual layering of the decoration within each space is both real and speculative - the distinction between the two often blurred, providing the viewer with an insight into the life of the spaces they use. 

Alan Chandler is a Specialist Conservation Architect with the London based practice Arts Lettres Techniques and a Reader in Architecture at the University of East London. Helen Howard is a Scientific Officer [Microscopist] at the National Gallery in London, an expert in non-invasive investigations of wall painting using optical coherence tomography and hyperspectral imaging. Architect Gilles Retsin works as senior designer at Kokkugia and directs computational architecture at the University of East London. Retsin’s computer coding explores the hidden structural details and materiality of buildings

Chandler, A.

Howard, Helen

Retsin, G.

English

UEL Research Repository at University of East London

ARTIFICIAL REALITIES:THE PRODUCTION OFTHE COURTAULDThe Courtauld Institute of  ArtSomerset House, Strand, London. WC2R 0RNAn inquiry into the Production of  the Courtauld byAlan Chandler with Gilles Retsinand Helen HowardA Project curated by Elvira Valdesfor the 12th edition of  theEast Wing Biennial The Courtauld Institute of  ArtJanuary 2016 – July/August 20173 Biographies of  the exhibitors - 4Context - 6Locations - 12Specifications - 15Analysis One: Stratigraphy  - 19Analysis Two: Wall Scars - 68Process - 70 CONTENTAlan Chandler is a Specialist Conserva-tion Architect with the London based practice Arts Lettres Techniques and a Reader in Architecture at the Universi-ty of  East London. Chandler’s diverse experience ranges from material tech-nology to theorizing the politics of  con-servation, informed by a background as a typographer, designer-maker, contrac-tor, architect and writer.Belgian born architect Gilles Retsin worked in Germany and Switzerland and gained considerable experience with LAVA and as project architect with Christian Kerez. Retsin works as senior designer at Kokkugia and directs com-putational architecture at the Universi-ty of  East London. Retsin’s computer coding explores the hidden structural details and materiality of  buildings. Helen Howard is a Scientific Officer (Microscopist) at the National Gallery in London, an expert in non-invasive investigations of  wall painting using op-tical coherence tomography and hyper-spectral imaging. Alan Chandler Gilles Retsin Helen Howard 5  BIOGRAPHIES2 Chandler: Paris stratigraphy 2015 -human occupation within the buildings surface.1 Retsin and Bloch: Karosta 2014the point at which a register becomes a proposition.1 2In the Manifesto for the Society for the Protection of  Ancient Buildings, Wil-liam Morris defined two acute observa-tions on what he perceived to be a crisis of  attitude towards the artefacts of  built history. Two potential, and potentially conflicting, strategies for working with ancient buildings sit side-by-side within the Manifesto: to continue to develop buildings as living enclosures of  human endeavour, or to maintain them as the artworks they are, and to house our en-deavours in the new: These ideas are complementary, but in essence offer very different conclusions.When committed only to repair we now provide, and are responsible for, only the context of  the historic building, which through its protection and preservation from wear and weather is an artefact for future study. We have a curatorial role in our historic environment, and can read its accumulated history of  use up until the point at which we may only repair. The implication of  this idea is that the history that shaped the building as arte-fact is now over, engagement other than its conservation is withdrawn – “to re-sist all tampering with either the fabric or ornament of  the building as it stands; if  it has become inconvenient for its present use, to raise another building rather than alter or enlarge the old one”. Morris’s reasoning is clear; he was faced, as we are, with a situation where con-temporary intervention is overwhelming the “bygone art” of  architecture with its language, its demands and its materiality, and is destroying the readability of  his-torical continuity. From appearance to chemistry, contemporary building can be considered incompatible with an-cient fabric, so from this point onwards we should interpret, but we should not elaborate. The conclusion is that the “curatorial” role is intellectually active 7  CONTEXTStrategy 1.The need for “protection in the place of  restoration” and the folly of  imitation. Put another way, the definition of  repair means to do as little as is necessary, and when you do, it do it without pastiche. Strategy 2. History is a living process that registers its passing upon the built environment, and that process is a testament to a genuine art of  the everyday without affectation and artifice. Architecture is a celebration of  change over time, of  legibility without arti-fice. Both building and dwelling are an invitation to adapt sympathetically to the needs of  the time, “of  necessity wrought in the unmistakable fashion of  the time”. The real issue is defining how change is wrought so that it is “alive with the spirit of  the deeds done midst its’ fashioning”. How can architectural judgements be attuned to the balance between the endeavour to be housed, and the house itself  such that the essen-tial nature of  the activity is expressed yet maintains and enhances the presence of  the house through the very act of  alter-ation. The installation at the Courtauld draws on Morris’s call for readability, for rec-ognition of  the continuity of  inhabita-tion that our historic buildings can reg-ister, and makes manifest the value of  conservation research in opening up our appreciation of  sympathetic (and even on occasion unsympathetic) use which contributes to a building as enclosure of  the everyday. This emphasis on the everyday is an active tactic for resisting museumification – even within a muse-um itself.“A church of  the 11th century might be added or altered in the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, or even the 17th or 18th centuries; but every change, whatever history it destroyed, left history in the gap, and was alive with the spirit of  the deeds done midst its fashioning. The result of  all this was often a building in which the many chang-es, though harsh and visible enough, were, by their very contrast, interesting and instructive and could by no possibility mislead.” but physically passive, implying that his-tory becomes considered as academic rather than actively produced. This aspect of  the Manifesto is defen-sive – better to withdraw from interfer-ence than ruin through ignorance, and is borne of  Morris’s conviction that the connection between an industrialised and pre-industrialised society is broken. However, as is clear when considering Morris’s second strategy, this is not where his ambition lies. The notion of  a curatorial future runs counter to Mor-ris’s own idea of  history as an unfolding process of  creative change, and against his own experience of  craft as a constant activity of  making. This is encapsulated within his own counter argument –9  1781. To structure the colour windows throughout the East wing, the palettes and number of  strata Howard identified in eight distinct locations within the Fine Rooms provides the criteria for seven of  the eight pieces: Ceiling, Moulding, Cornice, Coving, Wall, Dado, Door and architrave.Supplementing this criteria are actual excavations that in one of  the locations provides an actual description of  the colour layers. This fusion of  actual and speculative responds to ‘Artificial Real-ities’, giving both real and fictionalized access to two centuries of  inhabitation.Within the café the inhabitation timeline is condensed, but the layers of  occupa-tion are still evident and provide the ba-sis for a parametric exercise. The walls of  Chambers building have received fixings to hold artworks from successive Biennials – holes and plugs litter the Georgian masonry and their mapping and re-use provides the framework for a spatial study that organizes a network of  threads to connect these scars together to give a contemporary expression of  these accumulated experiences. Within this network organized by the past, new, digitally generated pieces al-low the threads to be diverted and the formal connections between the scars to be manipulated willfully. The past is an often un-registered contributor to our present – this exercise in space shaping deals directly with this confrontation.Joshua Compston understood the so-cial and artistic role of  the Courtauld Building not as a fixed monument but a dynamic process of  renewal and social interaction. Through science and fic-tion, the daily renewal of  the Courtauld is both defined and alluded to. The Production of  the Courtauld shows this fine building for what is - a social structure as much as a museum piece. Through the tools of  fabric conserva-tion the significance of  people is re-vealed and discussed, and the reduction of  our historic buildings to spectacle can be confronted and refuted. Jacques Lacan once said that truth has the structure of  a fiction. The projects discuss two forms of  reality: ‘the con-structed and the revealed’. Both give a new shape to the reality we call ‘every-day’, revealing the legacy of  inhabita-tion through the physical depth of  the surfaces that defines the spaces of  the Courtauld itself, and through recon-structing the shape of  the space itself. The installation oscillates between the scientific reality of  Howard’s painstak-ing conservation based stratigraphy and a fictionalized re-presentation of  that knowledge through the use of  historic colour windows placed at key locations within the East Wing.The actual layering of  the decoration within each space is both real and specu-lative – the distinction between the two often blurred, so that the viewer is given insights into the life of  the spaces they use The artworks are derived from eight categories based on particular investiga-tions of  the Fine Rooms of  Somerset House occupied by the Antique Acade-my since a Deed of  Transfer in February 11  13  10 Extrapolating contemporary uses of  the Courtauld into a spaceLOCATIONS215678934The following categories of  colouring are derived from the specific analysis of  the Fine Rooms undertaken by Hel-en Howard. Each category corresponds to a typical element of  the interior – WALL, DADO etc., and provides the structure for a fictional revelation of  the historic identity of  the Courtauld spac-es. Although the windows are fictional, the presence of  these colours below the surface is actual, creating an ambiguity in alignment with the Biennial theme.The final category - STAIR - is not derived from Howard’s work, but is real - contemporary damage revealing through accident what Howard reveals through painstaking micro-excavation. The installation is achieved using Little Greene paints, close colour matching the originals.15  SPECIFICATIONcategory   site phases   colour spectrumCoving   6 14 phases  original: Pea green       Dark green       White       Cream/white       Pale green       Current colour   Mouldings  6 14 phases  original: Cream/white       Dark Beige       Cream/white x11       Current colourCorniCe   8 10 phases  original: Stone       Cream/white x9       Current colourdoor   9 16 phases  original: Beige       Dark green       Cream x11       Pale beige       Current colour        category   site phases   colour spectrumdado   1 16 phases  original: Pale grey       Cream/white x11       Dark brown       Yellow       Pale green       Current colourArChitrave  2 14 phases  original: Pale grey       Grey       Cream x10       White       Current colourCeiling   3 16 phases  original: Pale blue-green       Dark green       Cream/white x13       Current colourWall   2,4,6,7 17 phases  original: Warm mid green       Green       Cream       White       Cream       Yellowstair   5 19 phases  original: Dark grey       Beige       Stone       Pale green       Pea green       Beige       Dark buff       Pale green       Beige       Stone/beige x3       Dark brown       Sky blue       Dark grey       Black       White x2       Current colour17  Helen Howard’s 48 pages facsimile (reproduced from scans of  the original.) 19  ANALYSIS ONE:STRATIGRAPHYSince the exterior was reclaimed as a café, the inhabitants of  the Courtauld have used the walls as a gallery, the fix-ings for every picture that has ever been hung on these walls remain visible as scars - decades of  purposeful, curated interventions that have left a random field of  holes that this installation adopts as a register of  the life of  the Courtauld. The fixing points for the art of  others has initiated a process of  connection us-ing hair like threads to generate a physi-cality in space. The act of  connecting these scars is ran-domised further through the integration of  digitally generated nodes that allow the threads to shift their trajectories, creating a dialogue between the art-works previously located on these walls, and the new spatiality created by this Bi-ennial intervention.The Café space is enclosed by Flemish bond brickwork laid in lime/sand mor-tar dating from the original Chambers building. The brick is London stock, with some soot blackening to the mor-tar still visible, indicating that this was an open court. Contemporary brick columns divide the space into built-in seating and support the ring beam to the glazed steel roof  and create a form of  Aula. No historic decorative surfaces are present, during the Café construc-tion brick cleaning using pressure wash-ing appears to have taken place, in some areas taking the external face of  the ma-sonry away with the soot. 69  ANALYSIS TWO:WALL SCARS1 Chambers brickwork, registering the procession of  artworks since the Café adopted the walls.2 Column brickwork, laid in sand/cement, the even colouration attempts sympathy with the Chambers walls. The fixings do not discriminate between original and contemporary. 3 Chambers brickwork, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx71  PROCESSWhere computational research in archi-tecture initially started out with a deep interest in curvature, continuity and gradual change, new research under-stands computation as fundamentally re-lated to the concept of  the discrete and distinct. This shift from the continuous field to the distinct object is profoundly linked with the nature of  computation and information, which can in the end be broken down to the calculation of  a single bit or unit. Computational pro-cesses like Finite Element analysis, cel-lular-automata, agent based systems and object-oriented programming languag-es are fundamentally based on discrete units rather then continuous wholes. Object-Oriented programming is a pro-gramming paradigm that translates con-cepts as objects that have specific meth-ods to interact. In programming jargon: the agency or behavior of  a class. Gra-ham Harman and Levi Bryant talk about objects wrapped inside of  other objects. Every object is understood as com-posed of  multiple other objects or parts. In “The Democracy of  Objects”, Bry-ant introduces the concept of  mereol-ogy; the philosophy of  part-to-part and part-to-whole relationships. Mereology Gilles Retsin 2016 Text to cover the process of  generative modeling for the nodes: a predefined whole which is assembled out of  perfectly fabricated, highly cus-tomized parts. These customized parts would have no existence outside of  the whole – they are reducible to the whole. In bricolage however, as a strange mere-ology, there is initially no whole – there are only parts. There is an internal re-sistance and autonomy in the parts, a reluctance to be wholified into an over-arching object. This is where the mate-rial - realist grounding of  the bricoleur comes in. A bricoleur is fundamentally materialist, as he has to somehow battle and negotiate with the material infra-structure of  the parts he wants to wrap into one object. Within a framework of  strange mereol-ogy and bricolage, computational power is not invested in the subdivision of  an object, but in the process of  formation as a messy assemblage of  objects into an “ emergent object”. The project for the Courtauld cafe investigates this ap-proach by introducing multiple compet-ing logics into one installation. On the one hand there is the initial mapping of  “scars” or holes in the brickwork, left by previous biennials or other events. On the other hand, there is the physi-cal behaviour and agency of  the fishing wire. Lastly, a series of  discrete, node-like objects introduce an autonomous logic in the system that prevents a sin-gle logic to develop. The holes in the wall can not simple be connected with the threads. The threads can not simple follow their own behavior. The nodes interrupt the linear interaction between holes and wire, introducing a complex, messy disturbance in the system. The resultant installation is not a predefined form, which has been carefully recon-structed, but the result between the in-teraction and negotiation of  different design agents. This process results in a geometry that is inexact, broken and seemingly messy and unpredictable. The parts are not reducible to the whole. This process is not to be confused with collage. In collage, different elements don’t react to each other, but rather cut and slice through one another. In a bri-colage, the objects actually develop a defined mode of  interaction, an agency or behavior. In collage, there is no inter-action on the level of  the objects consti-tuting the composition, which happens which happens hierarchically above the parts, on the level of  the whole. In the Courtauld installation, computing is not anymore a continuous single process or meta-computational process, meant to generate a whole. The computational approach becomes a high-resolution, high-entropy assemblage of  discrete el-ements into emergent objects. Advances in manufacturing generate a new possibility for architecture to be-come truly information dense and het-erogeneous. To fully access the poten-tial, it is crucial to develop a new design methodology that is inherently hetero-geneous and capable of  capturing large sets of  information density. Instead of  a continuous meta-process, a workflow celebrating discreteness and assemblage might enable designers to fully harness the potential of  heterogeneity embod-ied in new printing technologies. The proposed design method or framework is based on a computational under-standing of  Object Oriented Ontology, where classes or objects become auton-omous entities that can interact with each other to assemble into a heteroge-neous substance.proposes that an object can never be re-ducible to its parts, but the parts are also not reducible to the whole. Levi Bryant describes this as strange mereology “ parts are not parts for the whole and the whole is not a whole for the parts” The concept of  strange mereology leads to the general idea that there is no continu-ity, or overall whole, no super object or super structure. On his blog larvelsubjects.com, Levi Bryant describes his own philosoph-ical work, in particular the book “The Democracy of  Objects”, as a form of  bricolage. Indeed, the book is eclectic and heterogeneous, an assemblage of  Deleuze, Luhmann, Lacan and Harman. For Bryant, bricolage loses the negative connotation and becomes a rich con-cept. Bricolage is the attempt to forge heterogeneous matter into a consistent object. From initially unrelated parts, a whole object emerges. The bricoleur works with matter, with the material in-frastructure available. “everything can only work on the infrastructure it has and the materials – cognitive, material and affective – that were available to it.” In a non-bricolage process, there is This document is published in conjunction with the exhibition Artificial Realities 12th edition of  the East Wing Biennialat the The Courtauld Institute of  ArtJanuary 2016 – July/August 2017Single publication January 2016Bernardita Santelices and Blanca ValdésExhibitionGraphic Design

Stratigraphic Strips: Variable Dimensions

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Stratigraphic Strips: Variable Dimensions

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