First day. Monday, the 13th of July 2009.The summer school started.Today, we are chosing our tutors. There are 8 groups, each with 2 up to 4 tutors.

At the very beginning we were given bags containing a book with info on the tutors themselves and about the issues we are going to work on. After that we met in the AA school's cantine.
There was a lot of people, I think somewhere between 60 to 80 persons. We say hello to each other. Some of them are smiling, some of them are nervoused - what you can see by looking at their pale faces.

The presentation starts. At first you could hear a few of words from Shumon Basar and Natasha Sandmeier - Directors of the summer school.

Unit 1: "Domesti-city" presentation - tutors are Adam Furman and Marie de Monseignat - they showed a movie about the current situation across the UK. The issue was that people live on the streets and they need to transform it because all property was officially repossessed by the World Bank. If we were to choose Unit 1, we would be filming a movie about the situation - how people survive and transform the space. The tutors were AA students - they also taught AA summer school in 2008 (I will make a longer presentation about them in next post).

Unit 2: "Three square metres of London". The tutors are Steve Bates, an artist, musician and audio technician; Joshua Bonnetta,a multi-discplinary artist working with sound and moving image; and Douglas Moffat, a landscape architect. All three live in Motreal, Quebec. The workshops focus on applied skills/technologies - field recording, microphones, transmitters, video and audio editing. The analog is often celebrated over the digital.

Unit 3: "The archi-tective": "Their story begins on ground level, with footsteps. They are myriad, but do not compose a series. They cannot be counted because each unit has a qualitative character:  a style of tactile apprehension and kinesthetic appropriation. Their swarming mass is an innumerable collection of singularities" M. De Certeau (quotes taken from their presentation). The workshops are about creating "incidental urbanism" and making Diorama - a popular device to present the megatropolis. The tutors: Julika Gittner, an artist and an architect from London; Sarah Entwistle, graduated from AA in 2006, lives in London; Geraldine Dening, a qualified architect, lives in London.

Unit 4: "SUB_PLAN". The workshops focus on making a booklet about 'how to' exploit urban laws in the following steps:
1. Standards: questioning the rules;
2. Specifics: Applying the rules;
3. Speculations: Expanding the rules.

The tutors: David Knight, a designer, lecturer and researcher based in London; EUROPA - a group formed in 2007 by four graphic designers: Mia Frostner, Robert Sollis, Paul Tisdell and Rasmus Troelsen; Finn Williams, a planner based in London; and Ulf Hackauf, an independent architect based in Rotterdam.

Unit 5. "We are interested in investigating the forgotten, the incidental and the unseen...
...in exploring the large scale consequences of small things.(...)"
Small scale, large consequences - a monument to the miniature - this is the main idea of this Unit. The tutors: Inigo Minns, an architect from London and Onkar Kular who currently runs an experimental design unit at the College of Art, teaches architecture and spatial design at LMU and lectures worldwide.

Unit 6 covers making body installations - conetemporary urban fashion outfits. The preliminary construction strategies include: structure and skin, deconstruction and reconstruction, silhouette and volume manipulation, and suspension cantilevering. The tutors: Noam Andrews, graduated from AA, based in London; Rene Barownick, Director of Wunderkammer, an architecture and space consultancy based in Berlin and London; and Yeena Yoon, AA grad, currently works for Zaha Hadid Architects.

Announcing the units

I chose Unit 1 because it fits the current situation across the world. I thought: "Yeah! Let's make a footage!". But the first words of the tutors were: "You will work very hard during the three weeks - including Saturdays and Sundays." Hmm...

Since the capital of The Great Britain is the noisiest among the other European capitals I have ever been to, I try to focus on the task I have in here, in London. The task is to answer my short, little question:

"What is AA?"

My blog will be about what the AA is and how I experience the school.

While I was at the Architectural Association's doors last year. I was wondering about how it could look like  to be a student of the school. And I can finally feel it, now. The first day passed. We have choosen our Tutors already. Everybody from the course has his first choice tutors. We were pleased with the announcement. Bravo for the AA's authorities. Everybody from the course has his own background. There are students from all around the world. Some of them study architecture, others want to do it. There are high school students as well as people who graduated from architectural schools.

When you go back to the first line of the post you will find out what could be inspiration for people who enjoy creativity. You could listen to the sound of the city. For me the city of London sounds like punk rock or drum and bass. Here are tons of sounds which merge into one track. It might frighten you a bit at the begining but in the end if you like picturesqueness and colourfulness you probably would like it.

So... I think you could also think about your own city like listening to a specific kind of music. Try to do that and you will not regret it. And remember:

Wherever you go, always keep the music within you...