THE UNNATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM: UNBUILDING THE MUSEUM TYPOLOGY
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The Architectural Association 2020-2021
Experimental 13
Tutors: Lily Jencks and Jessica Reynolds
The UnNatural History Museum:
Unbuilding the Museum Typology
Urs Fischer – You, 2007, excavation, gallery space, 1:3 scale replica of main gallery
space, dimensions variable, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York
Introduction
“No one knows any longer whether the reintroduction of the bear in Pyrenees,
kolkhozes, aerosols, the Green Revolution, the anti-smallpox vaccine,
Star Wars, the Muslim religion, partridge hunting, the French Revolution,
service industries, labour unions, cold fusion, Bolshevism, relativity, Slovak
nationalism, commercial sailboats, and so on, are outmoded, up to date,
futuristic, atemporal, nonexistent, or permanent.”
― Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern
Experimental 13 believes that museums have an urgent role to play in the
ecological emergency. As encyclopaedic institutions where knowledge is
certified and archived, museums are pivotal to reach consensus, galvanize
action, and change culture to address the climate crisis. Our focus this year is
the Natural History Museum; allowing each student to engage with a museum
that is local to them in their home country. Where better to design a new
relationship with the natural world?
From dinosaur skeletons to meteorite specimens, from tree fossils to extinct
Maria Edmee Orombelli, Museum of Wilding, Exp 13 2019-20 flower pressings, Natural History Museums preserve, conserve and display
all objects associated with life and the earth, educating us on our relationship
to the natural world. But museums are not just places of preservation;
behind the scenes scientists in laboratories conduct new scientific research
into our origins and evolution, breakthroughs are made, and paradigms are
overturned. These collections are housed inside monolithic purpose-built
museum-cathedrals - how can these become places of cultural production for
the future? The unit will explore different ways to prompt action and create
engaged citizens.
We will extend or contract, explode or decolonise Museums of Natural History,
unbuilding or dismemebering their systems of operation to open them up
to new modes of accessibility, publics, collections, technologies, spaces,
temporalities and programmes. Acting on these existing institutions to create
extensions or contractions, we will follow our well-structured unit methodology
of architectural obsessions, learning from contemporary artists, and developing
unique 4d representations adapted to remote learning. Students will complete
the year with a detailed design for the re-building of a Museum of Natural
History, it is up to you to set the terms on which such a building should exist.
By re-building the Natural History Museum building type, injected with future
narratives, we will reclaim its urgent position at the centre of debates about
the environmental emergency, the climate crisis, the ongoing pandemic, and
Maria Theresa Alves, To See The Forest Standing, exhibited at Disappearing Legacies: The World environmental justice.
as Forest, currated by Anna-Sophie Springer and Dr Etienne Turpin. 10 November 2017 – 29
March 2018 Zoologisches Museum Hamburg
Key Theme: Museums and Ecology
THESE
‘NATURAL HISTORY
Beijing Seoul MUSEUMS’ HAVE
NOTHING TO DO WITH
‘NATURE’ IN 2020.
The normative natural history museum type is in urgent need
of a redesign as we seek a new relationship with nature in the
environmental emergency. While their historic collections of
the natural world are vast, with carefully preserved specimens
Madrid Ottowa
in climatically controlled display cases, we will seek out future
natures in new environments. We will ask:
How does the natural history museum relate to the city?
How does it relate to a living world?
What Natural History is there outside of Human History?
How does a museum collection relate to a community?
Does it privilege an elite point of view?
Is it only about preserving historical records and dead
animals?
Can a museum create new cultures?
London Paris What do its spaces say about ‘Nature’?
How can a museum galvanise action on climate change?
What is the relationship between technological approaches
versus cultural approaches to the environmental emergency?
Why is a singular monolithic iconic institution a problem?
How should we exhibit nature today?
Images: These large singular museums are just some
examples of institutions in different cities- we want you to
work one that is local to you, and that you can deeply engage
Rio de Janeiro New York
Key Theme: Museums and Ecology
In answering some of the key questions on the previous page,
we will be looking at different models of museums for the
future and a range of subthemes, including:
NemeStudio- Museum of Lost Volumes Alexander Von Humboldt- Heights of Mountains
1. Decolonising the collections
and distributing the museum into
the city/landscape/world
2. The Hybrid museum
3. Bringing the city / community
inside the museum
Louis Kahn- Yale Centre for British Art Lina Bo Bardi, MASP installation
4. Enacting the museum
through time like a festival
5. Degrowth / unbuilding /
contracting the museum
‘Normality is the ongoing power of the fossil fuel industry
at work. The only way to break that power and change the
politics of climate is to build a countervailing power. Our job
— and it’s the key job — is to change the zeitgeist, people’s
Sanna - Louvre Lens Hans Dieter Schaals Path sense of what’s normal and natural and obvious. If we do that,
all else will follow.’
Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org
Covid-19 has put a new ‘normal’ into the realm of possibility.
This year is an opportunity for urgent change to recalibrate
our relationship with the natural world, and we will experiment
in redefining this relationship through the vehicle of the
natural history museum.
Mary Mattingly Mass Obstruction LSE World Turned Upside-down
19th Century
Key Theme: Museums and Ecology
What is a Natural History Museum?
According to Wikipedia: ‘The primary role of a natural history
museum is to provide the community with current and
historical specimens, to improve our understanding of the
natural world.
Renaissance cabinets of curiosities were private collections
The presentation of the Diplodocus cast (Lord Avebury speaking)
that typically included exotic specimens of natural history,
sometimes faked, along with other types of object. The
VS Ashmolean Museum, opened in 1683, was the first natural
history museum to grant admission to the general public.
Today All kept artefacts were displayed to the public as catalogues
of research findings and served mostly as an archive of
scientific knowledge. The mid-eighteenth century saw an
increased interest in the scientific world by the middle class
bourgeoisie who had greater time for leisure activities,
physical mobility and educational opportunities than in
previous eras. Other forms of science consumption, such as
the zoo, had already grown in popularity. Now, the natural
history museum was a new space for public interaction with
the natural world. Museums began to change the way they
exhibited their artefacts, hiring various forms of curators, to
refine their displays.’
Researh Laboratory inside the Natural History Museum There are now Natural History Museums in nearly every
capital city. Their role has remained one of educating the
public about the natural world, and has expanded into being
a place for in-depth cutting-edge research into many of the
fundamental questions facing humanity, from climate change
to the origins of man.
As new Natural History Museums get built around the world,
they pose a complex question of how to both represent, and
act upon humankind’s relationship to Nature: not just our
archiving of Natural History, but also the creation of a Natural
Future.
New Shanghai Natural History Museum designed by Perkins+Will
Key Approach: Architectural Obsessions
Each student will create a rigorous architectural language
through a development of their own ‘Architectural Obsession’.
These obsessions will guide the project through all design
decisions and modes of representation over the course of the
year.
This rich process of iterations and in-depth research enables
each student to cultivate an architectural language that
is legible, experimental and unique. We are interested in
architectural obsessions that are strongly formal and result in
a powerful conceptual and experiential affect.
This year the architectural obsessions will be developed
through the study of artist’s practices, and your own iterative
drawings and models. To develop this obsession, each
student will have a ‘Definition Folder’- developed on Miro- to
which they will add relevant precedents, articles, artworks,
scientific studies, sketches and more. This folder, with its
layers of references, will convey the full spectrum of the
meaning of their architectural obsession.
The architectural obsession is a way to create a rigorous
architectural language that drives the design at the 4 different
scales at which we work: the urban scale, the architectural
scale, the detail scale and the scale of representation.
Obsessions create a coherent portfolio and specific expertise
that develops your own architectural interest- interests that
will continue well beyond the unit year.
JinGyeong Ryu: obsession-weight inversion Nata Dzhmukhadze: obsession-shadow
Key Representation: Animated Drawings + models
With a focus, this Covid-year, on digital representation and
on screen presentations we will develop the Exp13 well
established 4d drawing techqniue into controlled animations
that bring the discipline of orthographic projected drawings to
life on the screen.
We will be using Adobe After Effects to animate layers and
embed video into your drawings. The animation technique
must be another way to research and express your
architectural obsession at the 1:1 scale of the drawing.
We will continue to make physical models, both as iterative
design responses, and as a step in the final representation of
your design project.
Remote learning: Covid-19 Workshops
We are aware of the perceived difficulties of setting off on
this year-long unit journey remotely, and so we will begin
the year with a series of workshops and conversations in
different groups and pairings so that you can get to know
your unit peers, as well as your unit tutors. These unit-wide
conversations and readings will happen throughout the year.
To ensure you are learning tools and techniques at the right
speed we will hold a number of workshops focused on Adobe
After Effects and other representational tools.
Artist Studio Visits
In collaboration with the AA Public Programme, we will join
a series of virtual artist studio visits, being inspired by new
modes of engagement, and discovering new ideas and
representational techniques that can inform your developing
practice. .
Technical Studies (TS): Late Submission
We will work to the Late TS submission. Each 3rd year
student will use their obsession as a way to unpack a rigorous
technical study connected to ideas of the environmental
emergency.
Diller Scofidio: Slow House drawing and model
Brief 1.1 A Room with an Artwork Term 1, Weeks 1-3
The first brief explores how we display artworks, and how in particular we can
challenge the white cube aesthetic and find new ways of engaging with the
natural world in unexpected ways.
Each student will begin the year by creating a new display room for a
contemporary artwork that has a meaningful relationship to the natural world.
The artwork will provide the inspiration for the design and representational
approach of each student. Proposals will take into account everything from the
detail of the display fixings to the volume of the room, from natural and artificial
lighting techniques to the position and journey of the viewer, from the entrance
threshold to the atmospheric qualities of materialities. The floor, walls,
windows, ceiling, plinths and hanging systems will be re-imagined through this
unique space designed for a specific artwork. These ‘rooms’ or ‘vestibules’ will
be siteless. They will be intense spaces that facilitate a new experience and
type of interaction with the artwork and the natural world.
Students will be grouped into themes for discussions about different categories
of natural history: animals (extinct and living), plants (botany and mycology)
and geology (minerals and rocks).
Rothko Chapel, Houston, 1971, Interior view
From this brief, each student will identify and start to define their architectural
obsession, an action that has formal and conceptual relevance for the topic of
museums in an environmental emergency.
-In what ways can the space be totally specific to the object?
-How can the architecture intensify the relationship between the object and the
viewer?
- How can we redefine the relationship between representations of nature and
living nature?
Outputs:
- Unit presentation about artist + specific artwork
- Unfolded 4D room drawing incorporating plan and elevations, with opening
elements and animation/s behind
- One visualisation -animation if desired
- Define the architectural obsession- start in Miro
Readings + Research to focus on the particular artists chosen.
Rothko Chapel, Houston, 1971, Unfolded Elevations of artworks on hexagonal plan
Jury 1.1
Brief 1.2 Taxonomies of Obsession Term 1, Weeks 4-5 (6)
This brief consolidates the notion of an architectural obsession by carrying
out in-depth research into its histories, and collecting relevant precedents in
art, architecture, science and other disciplines. This research will then inform,
and run in parallel to, a series of formal tests that will seek to invent a new
architectural language for each student’s obsession.
Iterative testing will be carried out through physical and digital models,
and representations of those models. We will explore the extremes of the
obsession: how far can it go before its meaning breaks down? Each obsession
will test a specific geometry and materiality. This short brief is site-less.
At the same time we will be cataloguing relevant representational techniques,
as well as display techniques and modes of classification. The purpose is
to find a representation technique born out of the obsession, thus ensuring
Sol Lewitt, Variations of Incomplete Open Cubes
an intense rigorous thread between the architectural concept and how it is
represented.
***A representational workshop by unit collaborator Alex Butterworth will inform
this brief.
Outputs:
- 10+ iterative formal tests: physical and digital, displayed and
catalogued
- 10+ representations of those formal tests in 2d, 3d, and 4d
- Formal precedent booklets (art, architecture, science etc)
- Representational technique precedent booklets
Jury 1.2
Natural History Museum classification system
OPEN WEEK
Brief 1.3 Uncovering Museum Typologies Term 1, Weeks 7-8
In this brief, each student will select a local natural history musuem which will
inspire their final project. Due to covid, we recommend selecting the natural
history museum in your home city or country if possible so that you will have
the opportunity to visit it. While students will be operating in different cities and
cultures, the building type will tie our conversations together as we will explore
the variations between them.
Each student will carry out site, architectural and programmatic analysis of the
selected museum. Each student’s research will be collated into a unit booklet
Musée Albinet Thomas Hirschhorn Wunderkammer that researches the natural history museum as a type. In order to be able to
draw comparisons and extract the similarities and differences between natural
history museums in varying locations, we will establish shared modes of
representation for this brief, resulting in a coherent book.
As part of this brief, each student will create a layered 4d time-line of their
natural history museum incorporating the time-lines of their collections,
buildings and operations.
Outputs:
- Site/urban analysis of the museum
- Historical research into the institution, the site and the city presented
as 5 slides each
- Analysis of architectural and programmatic layout
- 5 minute site video, edited with audio
- 4d ‘survey’ drawing with video in it
- Collation of each student’s work into a unit booklet to explore the
James Stirling Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Pierre Patte after Charles-François Ribart,
Germany: Worm’s-eye axonometric section view of Ribart’s elephant 1758
natural history museum as a type
- 4d Timeline
Jury 1.3
Frank Gehry Bio-diversity museum, Panama CaixaForum Madrid / Herzog & de MeuronBrief 1.4 Unbuilding the Museum Term 1, Weeks 9
This brief constitutes a collective unit workshop on the topic of what it means
to Unbuild the Museum. We will explore this through program, form, time,
material and more. We will challenge the assumptions of what museums
can be and think into the future. We will research new museum models that
challenge traditional models and we will conclude with a physical intervention
inside your natural history museum.
***We will work with a museum curator to understand contemporary issues at
stake for museums and explore ideas of ‘unbuilding’ with them.
Outputs:
- Unit 4D collage drawing with participation from each student
- Research on alternative museum precedent
- Intervention in natural history museum
OMA (*1975), Madelon Vriesendorp (*1945) and Rem Koolhaas (*1944), Medusa Raft, c. 1978.
Jury 1.4
Mabel Pei-Cheng Wu Museum of UnNatural History Exp 13 2019-20
WORKSHOPBrief 1.5 Briefs for a UnNatural Museum Term 1, Weeks 10-12
In the last brief of term 1, each student will put forward proposals for a new
Museum of Natural History, guided by their architectural obsessions and their
museum research. Different strategies may be explored - from a completely
new building on a new site to an extension or contraction into the existing
museum; from a decolonisation and decentralisation of the collection, to
inserting new porosities and programs into the centre of the museum.
*** Photoshop and layering workshop with Alex Butterworth, combining site,
programme, form and proposal into a layered drawing.
Outputs:
- Formal tests for a concept proposal in relation to the urban setting -
- Urban drawing showing new relationship of the Natural History
Museum collection to the city. 1:1000
- Adding a new layer onto 4d survey drawing
- Concept collage drawing combining site, proposal and function
Aldo Rossi, The Analogous City, Collage,1977
- Animated presentation
Jury 1.4
Georgie Belyanov Dip 13 2017 Roman Lovegrove Pollinating Urban Plan : Winter Break
Exp13 2015-16Brief 2.1 Architectural Proposals for Term 2, Weeks 1-5
UnNatural Museums of Future Histories
In the first half of the second term, students will develop architectural
proposals for their interventions to the Natural History Museum. The designs
will follow the logic of their architectural obsessions, resulting in architecturally
rigorous and legible interventions. Clear spatial, material and atmospheric
strategies will be established in this brief. The interventions will challenge
the existing fabric and function of the museums and create new modes of
accessing collections, engaging diverse audiences and interacting with the
natural world.
Outputs:
- Architectural drawings: plans, sections, elevations 1:200 1:50
- Visualisations + models
- Material palette
Jury 2.1
Design Earth: Rania Ghosn (*1977) and El Hadi Jazairy (*1970), After
Oil: ‘Das Island, Das Crude’, 2016
Lok-Kan Chau, Overlay of plan, elevation Roman Lovegrove, Exp13 2025-16
and site line 2016WINTER OPEN WEEK: Term 2, Week 6
STUDY TRIP TO ICELAND
Covid-permitting, we will plan a study trip to Iceland to visit the Natural History
Museum of Kopavogur, the Icelandic Institute of Natural History, Harpa
Concert Hall, and the incredible natural landscapes and lagoons of the island.
Winter scenes of Iceland Harpa Concert Hall
The Blue LagoonBrief 2.2 UnDetailing the Museum Term 2, Weeks 7-11
In the second half of term 2, students will focus on a key detail for their
proposal, creating a moment that disrupts the normative museum experience,
from a door handle to a window frame.
The detail will embody the architectural obsession at an intimate scale where
the audience will physically or visually interact with the architecture. This
scale is where materiality becomes paramount, and playing with 1:1 material
samples, will be a key tool.
The details will enhance the new experience of the museum for audiences
and reconnect the museum to the natural world - either in a subtle or a direct
way. Designs will consider the form and materiality of the detail with playful
unexpected results that reference nature.
Cesar Manrique, House Museum window detail, Lan- Natural History Museum, Geneve This detail will culminate in the TS research for third years.
zarote
Outputs:
- Architectural drawings: plans, sections, elevations
- Visualisations
- Material palette
Jury 2.2
The Museum of Lending, Alanood Alkhayat, Exp 13, 2019-2020
SPRING BREAKBrief 3.1 UnNatural Representations Term 3, Weeks 1-6
In the last term, we will focus on representation, creating coherent portfolios
for each project. We will refine our 4D drawing techniques and hone in on our
verbal communication skills.
This brief is an opportunity to bring together the year’s research into a clear,
powerful project with carefully edited arguments and richly illustrated designs.
The project will culminate in a developed animation presentation drawing
combining video, plans, sections, renders, details, text and diagrams.
We will focus on the production of this 4d drawing this term, with support in a
workshop from Alex Butterworth.
Outputs:
- 4d Urban drawings
- 4d Architectural drawings
- 4d Details
- Animated Presentation
Final Jury 3.1
EXAMINATIONS
Pei-Cheng Wu Museum of UnNatural History Exp 13 2019-20Selected Bibliography and Resources
Unbuilding
Keller Easterling, Critical Spatial Practice 4: Subtraction (Sternberg Press — April 15, 2014)
Céline Condorelli, Support Structures (Published by Sternberg Press, 2009 (red), 2014 (green –
reprint)
YUSOFF K, Hird M(2019). “Lines of shite: microbial-mineral chatter in the Anthropocene.” Posthu-
man Ecologies Complexity and Process After Deleuze, Rowan & Littlefield
Donna Haraway, “Awash in Urine”. Staying with the Trouble, (Duke University Press, September
2016)
Hannah Landecker, Culturing life: How Cells Became Technologies (Harvard University Press (1
Jan. 2010))
Ecology / Sustainability + Natural History
Bruno Latour - Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (2018)
Giovanna Borasi How Travelling Fruit, Ideas and Buildings Rearrange our Environment (2011)
exhibition + book
Michel Serres The Natural Contract (1990) trans.
Martina Contento Foam Library Dip13 The World as an Architectural Project MIT press March 2020 ed. By Hashim Sarkis, Roi Salgueiro
John Stezaker Collage Barrio and Gabriel Kozlowski
Obsession / Architectural Language / Rigour
Peter Eisenman, Ten Canonical Buildings 1950-2000 (Random House Incorporated, 2008)
Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts (1976-1981)
Contemporary Museum Design:
- Kai Bosworth and Steve Lyons, “Museums in the Climate Emergency,” in Museum Activism, eds.
Robert R. Janes and Richard Sandell (New York: Routledge, 2019).
- Jeremy Lecomte, “Blank Space: About the White Cube and the Generic Condition of Contempo-
rary Art,” in Theatre, Garden, Bestiary, -A Materialist History of Exhibitions, eds. Tristan Garcia and
Vincent Normand
library wall -Emma Barker, Contemporary Cultures of Display (Yale -University Press, 1999)
-Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics (Graham Foundation/MIT Press 1996)
-Cristina Bechtler and Dora Imhof, Museums of the Future (Les Presse du reel, 2014)
David Gissen, Manhattan Atmospheres: Architecture, The interior environment and urban crisis
(University of Minnesota Press 2014)
-Rosalind Krauss, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalist Museum (The MIT Press, 1990)
-Hans Ulrich Obrist, A Brief History of Curating (JRP Ringier, 2008)
-Sherer, Daniel The Architectural Project and the Historical Project: Tensions,
-Museum Typology in Architecture Review https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/typolog
typology-museums
Typology
--‘Type vs Typology’, lectures at AA Projective Cities symposium, London, 10th February
Butterfly classification 2014 http://projectivecities.aaschool.ac.uk/type-vs-typology/
-Ungers, O. M., “Ten Opinions on the Type” Casabella, 509-510: 93-95, (1985)
-Quatremere de Quincy, A. C., “Type” (trans.) A. Vidler, Oppositions, 8: 147-
150, (1977).
-Moneo, R., “On Typology” Oppositions, 13: 23-45, (1978).
New Affiliates Drywall is Forever -https://medium.com/@tlukejones/on-the-three-typologies-ed0b5747fd9cYou can also read
