Lawrence Lek 
Greenwich University Year 1 Architecture Design Tutor:


Celebrating new and emerging design talent, the Design Museum’s annual Designers in Residence programme supports designers at an early stage in their career. Now in its fifth year, the residency demonstrates the museums commitment to showcasing and supporting the next generation of design talent. Selected via an open-call, this years residents will be Freyja Sewell, Harry Trimble and Oscar Medley-Whitfield, Lawrence Lek and Yuri Suzuki. The finalists were asked to respond to the brief ‘Thrift’ and to explore the idea of economy and resourcefulness in an object, an environment or an experience, the results will be displayed in the Design Museum from 5 September 2012 – 27 January 2013. Asif Khan, Designer in Residence 2010 and currently working with his new practice Pernilla and Asif, will be the exhibition designer. 


Lawrence works as a sculptor, industrial designer and architect and will continue his investigation into the processes of natural growth and industrial fabrication through modular sculptural objects and environments. His work has been exhibited and performed in Japan, New York and London at the ICA and The Roundhouse. Born in Frankfurt to Malaysian- Chinese parents, Lawrence studied at Cambridgeand the Architectural Association.   

Please follow this link to the Design Museum
Please follow this link To Lawrence Lek website

The Master (2012)

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Time Out rating

Average user rating

34 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘The Master’ riffs on the early roots and allure of Scientology with the same compelling strangeness and heady intensity that the American writer-director of ‘Boogie Nights’ and ‘Magnolia’ brought to his last film, ‘There Will Be Blood’. ‘The Master’ is another tale of warped power and fanatical delusions, and it sees Anderson on captivating form as a director who is able to surprise and impress with scene after scene.

Some of the pre-release talk about ‘The Master’ sought to distance its gaze from Scientology, but the film is less equivocal: the organisation depicted here by Anderson may be called The Cause and its leader Lancaster Dodd (played with a frenzied, red-nosed exuberance by Philip Seymour Hoffman), but Dodd is clearly modelled on L Ron Hubbard, from his physical appearance and his eccentric theories to his claims to be a writer, a scientist and much else besides. The parallels are many, and the disguise is so thin as to barely exist.

But you can understand why Anderson didn’t want to get too bogged down in facts. His interest is as much emotional and psychological as historical. He creates a totally beguiling character, Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), to lead us in and out of Dodd’s bizarre world. We meet Quell at the end of World War II, a disturbed sailor obsessed with drinking and sexual fantasies (images of him and colleagues frolicking on a beach look like a Bruce Weber photo shoot gone rogue). Phoenix plays Quell with an alienating intensity; he’s unpredictable from the first frame to the last.

It’s through Quell that we meet Dodd, an amiable patriarch and leader of a small band of followers afloat on a ship, who takes this unhinged loner under his wing, and applies to him the methodology of The Cause, indulging his troubled mind and propensity for violence. Most of the drama unfolds over a few months in 1950, first on the boat and later at the house of a patron in Philadelphia, although scenes of Quell going through ‘processing’ (an intense form of analysis) inspire flashbacks to earlier days.

‘The Master’ is driven by a spare, jaunty and eccentric score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. Anderson dominates the rarely-used 65mm format – his close-ups are overwhelming and his longer shots are deep and layered, even seeming 3D-like at their most inventive, with colours and detail brilliantly evoked. Hoffman and Phoenix are at the top of their game, with Phoenix giving a hunched, deranged turn that flits between a childish search for acceptance and a hair-trigger air of violence.

As a depiction of a burgeoning religion, it’s like a portrait of Jesus from the perspective of one of the lesser known disciples: the Gospel According to Quell. We learn that Dodd is a bacchanalian figure, fond of fun and power, prone to extreme anger when challenged and adept at extracting funds and time from his loyal supporters. Anderson asks: why do men such as Dodd and Quell come together? What do they need from each other? How do they sustain each other’s fantasies?

His answers partly lie in a portrait of the needy meeting the powerful. But there are also suggestions of more inscrutable psychological and sexual motives for such alliances. It’s also a commanding portrait of America at a very particular point in time: Anderson may keep his drama close to a few key characters, but he also offers a strong, disturbing sense of a world turned upside down by war and of a chaos that allows the strange new order of The Cause to emerge.

Author: Dave Calhoun

Time Out London

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH CENTRE: 
ROSWELL NEW MEXICO

Please follow this link to the official museum exploring the Roswell incident

Follow this Link to The Red Bull Stratos site

Touch down . . . . . from the edge of space Felix Baumgartner. Please follow this link
from the Guardian  [ More to follow]

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) was born in 1928 in Lexington, Virginia. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1947–49); the Art Students League, New York (1950–51); and Black Mountain College, North Carolina (1951–52). In the mid-1950s, following travels in Europe and Africa, he emerged as a prominent figure among a group of artists working in New York that included Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. In 1968, the Milwaukee Art Center mounted his first retrospective. This was followed by major retrospectives at the Kunsthaus Zürich (1987) travelling to Madrid, London and Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1994) (travelling to Houston, Los Angeles, and Berlin) and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2006). In 1995, the Cy Twombly Gallery opened at The Menil Collection, Houston, exhibiting works made by the artist since 1954. The European retrospective "Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons" opened at the Tate Modern, London in June 2008, with subsequent versions at the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Museum of Modern Art in Rome in 2009. Recent exhibitions include "Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works 2000-2007," The Art Institute of Chicago (2009) and "Sensations of the Moment," the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, (2009). In 2010, Twombly’s permanent site-specific painting, Ceiling was unveiled in the Salle des Bronzes at the Musée du Louvre. At the same time he was made Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur by the French government.

Twombly died in 2011 in Rome, Italy.

GAGOSIAN Gallery London

BRITANNIA STREET
6-24 BRITANNIA STREET
LONDON WC1X 9JD
T. 44.207.841.9960
F. 44.207.841.9961

HOURS: TUE-SAT 10-6

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100 ABANDONED HOUSES

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Follow this LINK to the ICA viewing below . . . 

The Queen of Versailles

7 September 2012 - 28 September 2012

 £10 / £8 concessions / £7 ICA Members

Lauren Greenfield’s documentary concerns septuagenarian Florida timeshare mogul David Siegel, his surgically enhanced 43-year-old trophy wife Jackie, and their many children and unhousetrained pets.

Greenfield began filming long before the 2008 financial crash jeopardised the construction of America’s largest residence, their tacky homage to the Palace of Versailles (by way of Las Vegas). However, the Siegels gamely let her continue even as their ostentatious lifestyle descended into a comi-tragedy of pet poo, unpaid servants and recrimination. As Jackie whines that the federal bank bailout was “supposed to help people like us”, David threatens to replace her with “two 20-year-olds” if she can’t curb her retail addiction, which basically means going to Wal-Mart… in a stretch limo. In all its compelling, often hilarious ghastliness, The Queen of Versailles is both a cautionary tale of sub-prime property speculation and an unflinching study of taste-free wealth on the slide.

Dir. Lauren Greenfield, USA/Netherlands/UK/Denmark 2011, TBC minutes.

Calendar

Date	Time	Venue	Book
Friday 28/09/2012	3:00 pm	Cinema 2	Book

The Master Plan is an artist’s book, authored by Stephen Hodge of Wrights & Sites, as a complementary project to the public art programme commissioned by Situations and Field Art Projects for Weston-super-Mare. The programme formed part of Sea Change, a national initiative to support the revitalisation of British seaside towns in 2010. Wrights & Sites, an artist/academic collective, were one of the six artists commissioned. This book takes as its inspiration the collective’s reconnaissance material collected whilst researching their permanent commission ‘Everything you need to build a town is here’. The unpublished transcript of a public meeting for the post-war redevelopment of the town acts as a catalyst for a visual exploration of redevelopment and regeneration from the ‘fantastic acropolis’ of Portmeirion to SimCity master-builders. Hodge annotates the transcript of this 1947 meeting with historical and contemporary newspaper cuttings, found material and photographs, concluding with a conversation which explores the context of regeneration as an inspiration and hindrance for contemporary artists.

The Master Plan by Stephen Hodge, is co-published by Book Works and Situations, as part of Co-Series, in an edition of 1,000 copies, full colour and b/w, 96 pages, soft cover. Designed by Polimekanos, 210 x 297mm

http://www.bookworks.org.uk/node/1743 

ASIF
KHAN &
PERNILLA 
OHRSTEDT

Please follow this link for more images and information for Beatbox, Coca-Cola pavilion at the Olympic park.

Mikhail Karikis’s work emerges from his long-standing investigation of the human voice as a sculptural material and a conceptual compass, which he employs to explore notions of community and politics of work, impossibility and address of difference. Karikis's interdisciplinary approach embraces visual art, performance and sound, often generating collaborative projects which engage other art practitioners or specific communities positioned outside the mainstream. His work ranges from the poetic to the theatrical, and activates the potential for ruptures both in perception and ethical concerns.

Karikis's work has been shown at the Danish Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Manifesta 9, Thessaloniki Biennale, Tate Britain and elsewhere. Below is a brief list of some of Karikis's projects. For more information, please contact the artist's studio here.

ROCA Gallery

Pernilla Orhstedt former sixteener has artifacts currently on show at Roca Gallery, where she has also developed a backdrop for fashion week, assisted by former year on Greenwich students, and it is well worth a trip as the gallery was designed by Zaha Hadid.

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Welcomes

Introducing  our new teaching partner at UNITSIXTEEN:

Jonathan Hagos

Born in Amsterdam, brought up in the UK and of Eritrean origin, Jonathan holds a 
Bachelor of Science and Post Graduate Diploma in Architecture from the Bartlett 
School of Architecture, UCL. His work focuses on the ‘re‐illustration’ of post‐colonial 
themes such as freedom, identity and migration executed through diverse media 
such as cartography through to film and full‐scale installations. Jonathan is 
interested in the 'Architect as Cartographer' and the making of maps as 
interpretations of  our surroundings to form representations of perceived, or 
possible, realities. Jonathan's work has featured in international design journals, 
publications and exhibitions, including 'Freedom of Speech in the City’ in Barcelona 
which he curated, Tokyo Designers Week and London Design Festival.

Jonathan was Lead Tutor of the Architecture Foundation programme at the Cambridge 
School of Visual and Performing Arts, and continues to act as a visiting design critic 
at design schools around the UK. He taught with Professors Andrew Holmes and 
David Greene on the MArch course at Oxford Brookes University and will be joining 
the new undergraduate unit, Unit H at Oxford Brookes University for the upcoming 
academic year 2012-2013. 

    Welcome Back . . . . . . 

    UNITSIXTEEN                         HERRON + ISA + HAGOS

RESTORATION . . .

Unitsixteen will continue to explore the myths of the near future. Last year we studied the emerging territories of Stratford City and the Westfield center, proposing alternative Olympic legacies, a fresh new world of dreams, unparalleled, unnatural beauty and wonder.

Returning to the heart of the metropolis this year, we will consider the boundaries between wealth and power at the center of the Common-Wealth. Trafalgar Square will form the focus of our study. Imagined as a public space by John Nash, Sir Charles Barry, most recently re-modeled by Sir Norman Foster. A complex paradoxical landscape, surrounded by the symbols of lost tribes, failed ideologies and faded power. Restoration - is a collective call to challenge, to re imagine the utility and function of the institutions of state, rejecting traditions, proposing new futures for social change democracy and protest.

The year will begin with a short speculative exercise, supported by tutorials and seminars. You will be asked to reflect on the urban context of site, to uncover individual agendas and trajectories of interest. Final year students will further develop these themes into individual thesis projects. First year students will apply their findings to “The Robinson Institute” an alternative proposal for National Gallery extension site as their major building project for the year.

Field Study: To be confirmed.

Unit Support: Alford Hall Monaghan Morris Architects will continue to provide Year 4 Practice support.