PEEPSHOW LONDON
Architectural Association -AA- London , Unit 6 AA
2015
2015
Peepshow was established in the Architectural Association as a way to critique stable forms in architecture. Lead by Rafael B Duran and Victor Cano Unit 6 took a journey from ‘Big London’ to ‘b London’ to emphasize affection, atmosphere, body and instability—not the stable objects and forms so often associated with architectural production. A wide range of cultures, peoples, and customs from regions across the world shape the ‘b London’ experience gathered in the Elephant and Castle district. ‘b London’ is always under construction, it is synonymous with eccentricity, and it refuses any power from the centre. Elephant and Castle is literally and figuratively outside of ‘Big London’ being the model for Peepshow architecture; architecture based on untouchable elements without objects where the most important target has been to narrate the architectural production from cartographies or performances to interviews and movies. This helps to understand space through affections and not only through Cartesian conditions, enhancing the meaning of architecture itself and showing a new complex reality difficult to depict because of immaterial things that were revealed: market movements, little histories, immigration policies, new spatial possibilities or genetic combinations. To represent this reality at the AA, Unit 6 built a 1:1 scale Peepshow whose principle element was a 2000mm x 1500mm x 4mm spy mirror where gravity and rational displacements are lost and the current world appears to be formed by intimacy, eroticism, overlap, reflections and desires caught up in an instant. In this way, Unit 6 introduces ‘Peepshow London’ as a critical construction against stability in architecture.
Instructors- Rafael B. Duran + Víctor Cano Ciborro, Image&Video editor: Rocío Romero
Students: Jose Antonio García-Márquez, Yuto Handa, Zilu He, Kim Yeon Ho, Aarushi Jain, Hotaru Kawaguchi, Yuka Minatizaki, Akiko Ono, Gustavo Silva, Ko Tsruta, Shijin Zhang.
Guest lectures: Miguel de Guzmán & Rocío Romero (Imagen Subliminal) and Tèrence Pique.