London's Belly

Unit 2: Soaked, taught by Dor Schindler, Georgia Hablutzel and Love di Marco will present their brick water fountain at 12:00pm in the New Yard. 

Unit 1: Craving Earth, taught by Gaia Crocella, Carlotta Novella and Emma Kaufmann- La-Duc will present their earthy foodscapes at 2:00pm in the Barrel Vault.

Unit 3: Unforgettable Noon, taught by Bodo Neuss, Daniel Garcia Moreno, Shaan Patel and Jacek Rewinski will present their unforgettable eating contraptions at 15:30pm at 33 Bedford square, first floor.

Unit 4: Octopus’ s Garden Vol.2, taught by Marco Veneri, Valerio Ciaccia, Milo Mclaughlin- Greening, Andrea Veneri will present their garden occupation at 5:30 pm at Ching’s Yard.

The AA Summer School 2023 explores the urban landscape of food consumption, production, sale, transport and storage within London. During its three-week programme in July 2023, units have set out from Bedford Square to investigate the ways in which the city consumes and metabolises food, energy and togetherness.

The act of eating is performative yet not a performance; it is charged with meaning and shaped by a wide range of relationships for which architecture is an enabler. The AA Summer School 2023 has been investigating the spatial politics of food-related structures and events in a post-Covid-19 environment: markets, street fairs, restaurants, canteens, storage depots, domestic kitchens and commercial facilities are the protagonists of our summer venture. Students operate collaboratively with a group of tutors from a variety of backgrounds, working towards the installation of a final project that is exhibited at the AA.

The Summer School programme aims to build creative relationships between a diverse group of people who work together to investigate what architecture is, and what it can be – pushing the boundaries of architectural education beyond the established curriculum. We experiment within the school and out in the city; using the AA’s facilities and academic resources; we party, work, laugh and play. The Summer School enables radical experimentation and freedom – both of which are central to the AA itself.

London’s Belly happily addresses the topical conversation on the relationship between food and architecture that has been set by Anna Puigjaner from MAIO architects and Kitchenless, the 6th Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB), which is titled “Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism” and is curated by Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou; and more recently Foodscapes, the Spanish Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale, that focuses on the architecture of food production, distribution, and consumption, developed by Eduardo Castillo Vinuesa and Manuel Ocaña and many more who have the critical appetite to question the forces that bring our tables together.

The Summer School is a full-time, three-week course comprising a unique and intensive programme of design studios, seminars, lectures and parties. Based on the AA unit system, it offers participants the opportunity to experience a diverse selection of different learning environments, teaching agendas and design techniques.

The programme offers, in conjunction with the onsite programme, an online unit for students who will be meeting via zoom. The online unit will operate in parallel with the on-site events and those students will have digital access to all of the public programme.

UNITS

UNIT 1, Craving Earth, is led by Carlotta Novella and Gaia Crocella in a collaboration with Emma Kaufmann.

CRAVING EARTH traces the cultural, social and political presence of soil, from under our feet and into our bellies. We explore London through interactions with its soil, investigating the methods used to obtain it, transform it, grow and build with it. As artist Rosetta Elkin says, 'If you want to see what I call "the city", a dynamic scene where all kinds of organisms are working together, you can’t stay above the ground.'

UNIT 2, Soaked, is led by Georgia Hablützel and Love Di Marco, in collaboration with Dor Schindler.

Water is everywhere. Yet, Architects rarely see it as a resource. In Architecture, water is a liability. We design gutters and drains because our relationship with water is technocratic; we excel in producing dry environments rather than celebrating its qualities. We limit our engagement with water to hygiene outlines, leaving it to engineers to resolve. This summer we will explore the architecture of water. Water is an object. Water is a body. Water is a Landscape. We will study the traditions, rituals, and routines around water in the city, as a way to initiate a conversation about our most essential, shared resource.

UNIT 3, Unforgettable Noon, is led by Bodo Neuss, Shaan Patel, Jacek Rewinski, in collaboration with Daniel Garcia Moreno.

Dished up on the streets, lunch break in London compared to the city’s unparalleled dining scene is no less a lush adventure of scents, flavors and textures and with more affordable options it remains considerably more accessible to a wider audience of Londoners. The studio will identify a number of dishes on discovery walks through central London. We will investigate the selected dishes through a critical research and subsequently design an assistive eating device. These objects can be singular or multiple, movable or static, complete or constantly in construction. The design process will be straightforward and hands-on through a series of iterations. Eventually, the physical output will be built to a scale of 1:1. The objects will be tested, altered and finally taken to the city and activated during a collective lunch break in London -- an unforgettable noon.

UNIT 4, Octopus’ Garden Vol.2 is led by Marco Veneri, Valerio Ciaccia and Milo Mclaughlin-Greening, in collaboration with Andrea Veneri

If the city is a body, a garden is its belly. The garden digests, transforms and is transformed by its creators: the gardeners. We will explore ways in which a garden can be a place where food and knowledge are produced, an educational space, a place to build relationships with others, to share ideas and resources and collectively engage in live political action and ecological practices. Like octopuses, we will build our garden with materials and objects found in and around the AA in an attempt to start interacting and camouflaging into our own environment.