....PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION .......

........and so to my M.A ....the starting premise was to re-visit four buildings that I have worked on in the centre of Manchester with a view to exploring / investigating the possibilities of re-modeling them through the medium of drawing ;  ' architecture as drawn ' exists as a different discipline to ' architecture as built '.

Essentially I have spent the first term - this is a two year / part-time course - deconstructing my usual working methods , and reading a lot - an awful lot. The first main assessment point looms in May , for which I have to produce three essays  ( approx 4500 words ) together with evidence of work in progress , all presented ' in a style which reflects your topic '........    Hhmmm . I am essentially on a graphics lead course , and looking at previous students' submissions most have presented in the style of magazines , pamphlets and - in the case of Jonathan of Artistic Type - a beautifully presented and bound hard-back book. My back-ground is not text and type-setting , it's the built environment......so lets have a think about this .

How to present three essays in a style that reflects my practise ? 

An architectural drawing ? but how about the text ?..............so then I thought ' How about doing it as a walk-through installation , an exhibition ? ' ..........all the text , then , the essays could be laid out as text on the exhibition walls , and the whole of the written work - the essays - will be presented for the assessment as part of a full set of A3 working drawings for the proposed installation . A built form including text that will exist as a set of drawings.

                  
This is the initial plan layout that I did , just mapping out a progressive route through an installation picking up the salient points.

I then started blocking it out as a 3D birds eye view - entering at the bottom the route takes you through the ' Learning Agreement ' ( the initial statement of intent for the course ) , past the ' Methods of Inquiry ' and the ' Strategies of Thought ' walls ( both 1500 word texts ) , past a mapping model showing the locations in Manchester , past the ' Learning Record ' wall and on to the Four Rooms..........

The texts , the essays , when laid up on the walls should then look roughly like this....................on , then , past the Four Rooms , which form the central context of the exhibition and of which more in the next posting , and to the Bibliography - all essays should have a good bibliography . This being an installation / exhibition , though , one should of course Exit Through the Bookshop ..........all the books / references nicely displayed........

Hhhmmm................I could then of course follow up with a model  , but first of all I ought to write those essays..........