Corinna Dean & Chiara Piccinelli
A Shed at Shatwell, Making, Thinking, Doing
ABSTRACT
We are proposing a reflection on our project titled A Shed at Shatwell Farm, in which a collaboration between an architectural archive and ourselves, two practitioners/architects, carried out an on-site workshop and shed construction. The beginning of the project was sparked by a drawing in the Drawing Matter archive by the British architect James Gowan titled ‘A Shed’ (1977). This was interpreted and reimagined through its orthographic representation as to what it might become. The one week workshop will be carried out at Drawing Matter where the shed will be constructed as part of the summer workshop.
The abstract considers the project pre-building and our paper will also be a reflection on the built structure and the processes engaged with.
The process will explore how ideas and creativity are given form through the flows and transformation of materials and the movement of imagination in a sensory narrative.
We hope to inspire and jolt the processes of making through thinking and inspire to open up the maker to thinking of joining their own intuitive processes within an extension of the material, drawing on the ecological anthropologist, Tim Ingold’s writings.
Our paper will be illustrated with material documenting and reflecting on the participatory processes of the 15 participants, the site and the materials and the development from an architectural representation of a shed to a built form at 1:1.
BIOGRAPHIES
MARIA-CHIARA
Is an Architect and Director of PiM.studio Architects and a Tutor of The London School of Architecture. She is a strong believer in the importance of public spaces for a city to thrive, and in the crucial role nature plays within architecture. She began her career in Italy, and has since worked in Tokyo, Edinburgh and Paris for Kengo Kuma & Associates, and in Rotterdam for OMA/Rem Koolhaas.
CORINNA DEAN
Established ARCA, Archive for Rural Contemporary Architecture (2014). Her practice draws on Land Art, social practice, casting and weaving to explore how landscapes, the littoral conditions can be drawn into consciousness beyond the human. ARCA published Slacklands 1+2, which documents the archive, each book collaborates with an illustrator to interpret the sites and their material nature. She recently carried out a residency on the Isle of Sheppey. She is a member of Incidental Unit, which aims to reconnect the rigorous approach of the Artists Placement Group (1966-79) with wider concerns around the artists’ brief given to socially engaged art today. She completed a PhD at the LSE Cities Programme and runs an undergraduate unit on the BA Architecture course and the Designing Cities course at the University of Westminster.