EXPERIMENTAL GROUP

PLANNING FOR UTOPIA

Planning For Utopia is a collaborative project by the artist and architect Sophie Warren & Jonathan Mosley with the curator and critic of art and architecture Robin Wilson. The project is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of the West of England.

Proposition for Vertical Common

Address: 29 Smithfield Street, London, EC1A 9NB

Type of Proposition: Utopian Building Consent

The utopian imagination may be understood as a critique of our contemporary society and ideologies. However the utopian often remains within the realm of the theoretical. Through generating an imaginary art / architectural proposal for a real site, critiquing it as a potential planning application and publishing it within an industry magazine this utopian proposition will begin to infiltrate and challenge accepted norms of development within our cities. By this strategy of considered provocation we will begin to address how, in the production of new city space and urban relations, we can actively resist restrictive canons of standardization and maintain and enhance the imaginary forces at work in the city.

Public Consultation for Utopian Building Consent

Notices were posted adjacent to 29 Smithfield Street, London EC1A 9NB on 5th May 2008
Proposition No: 08/00001/UBC

Comments

The proposal looks great but it is so in contrast to a normal development it is unreal. The economics of your scheme alone make me shake. Where are the imaginary forces at work in the city that you talk about? Having said that, where are the imaginary forces within architecture? Development is about hard cash being made through putting up functioning boxes and getting the architects to make them look pretty (sometimes).

Andrew Fields //15/05/2008

As a first response I would offer up the provocation of Tristan Tzara's words from the Dada Manifesto (1918):"I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain things, and in principle, I am against manifestoes, as I am also against principles..."

Lee Stickells //16/05/2008 01:25:15

It was strange timing to receive an e-mail about Vertical Common after just listening to 'In our time' with Melvin Bragg which was all about enclosures and commons. I was struck by the idea of the 'bold peasantry' who were associated with commons, bold because they had time to be idle and therefore could afford to be subversive if they chose to. I liked the idea of Vertical Common reviving this lost knowledge however I wondered whether this knowledge is too lost to be remembered? Who really 'hangs out' these days - enough to be subversive?

Jasmine Black //16/05/2008 10:16:06

It says that the project would be treated as a potential planning application and be published in an industry magazine. If so I would suggest the text is made more direct. Imagine a planning officer, a member of the public or a reader of The Building Magazine looking at it. They would switch off, it's too long, too wordy, too aimed at only other artists etc.Buy a book called 'The Elements of Style' by William Strunk. It's about writing clearly and distinctly, the by-product of which is always brevity.No matter what you draw it will always have a percentage of people who do not like it or get it. Your real challenge is writing text that will catch and hold the interest of the reader, no matter what their view.

GUNN //16/05/2008 13:18:17

I wannabe a burnisher!

Nat //23/05/2008 09:35:43

I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the photographs on the real site. Something happen when it is not a photomontage, but when someone is holding the image at the real site so that they become like a window to another time, either in the future or in the past or a door to another zone, which is there all the time, but not always invisible. With the proposition for the vertical common I am not so sure. It is quite difficult not to read it as a structure, an empty structure, a grid, an inhabitable grid, a spatial grid, a form of inhabitation, of practice, of social structure. I am struggling between comparing it with former similar proposals and the anxiety of missing the point of it.

Tilo Amhoff //24/05/2008 23:12:10

Recently reading Larry Busbea's book 'Topologies' on the history and cultures of experimental architecture in France in the 60s, I was struck by his observations on how the 'utopianism' of figures such as Yona Friedman, and theorized by Michel Ragon, in rotating around ideas of 'the spatial and mobile city' would in turn completely mirror and end up aiding the governmental and administrative plans for the 'future city'. Networks, spatio-dynamism, and mobility would not only feature as aspects within an architectural utopianism rhetoric, but also precisely within the economic and political planning such utopianism mostly imagined itself countering. In this way, Friedman's conception provided a sort of conceptual model for the planning of a city based on the modern consumer, supporting an economic expansion that in many ways were at odds with the embedded ideological heart of the French spatial avant-garde. All this to say, forms of utopian expression then are at times not so far from the very mechanisms it presumes to be attacking, leading me to very much appreciate your project here, and how one might begin to circulate in and through the languages, structures, circuits and offices of urban planning and thought with degrees of curiosity, performativity, dialogue and investigation.

Surface Tension //25/05/2008 19:02:29

How will you get the sheep up?

Jessica //27/05/2008 15:47:22

I often belive William Morris had it spot on when he said: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."It may not be in my house, but it is outside our office and I'm afraid is neither useful nor beautiful. It would be a shame if the results of your efforts and enthusiasm were only mildly intereseting.

Richard Forshaw //03/06/2008 15:37:31

Who’s going to protect it from drunks, vandals, and anyone else out for a “laugh”? It could be a beacon of trouble for the entire area.

Brionie Sherriff //09/06/2008 13:48:41

A creative and critical presence, an organisation and an attitude - EXPERIMENTAL GROUP is an international, discursive collective of artists, architects and writers, formed to collaborate on both research and practice-led cross disciplinary projects.

NEWS AND EVENTS

PROPOGATING THE VERTICAL COMMON - Rogue Structures will incrementally spread and take root in and around Smithfield. Sited in accidental spaces of the area, seedlings of the Framework may be observed in the coming months.

BULLET BY-LAWS - In the interest of the commoner, it has been agreed that Secteur 3a, otherwise known as Denny's Enclosure, will be requisitioned for the event Bullet By-laws. Records may be posted on this site in due course.

COMMON CORRESPONDENCE

entry 1

As is widely known, the origins of life in the Vertical Common began as a kind of game performed on the small portion of the Framework referred to as 'Central Gate' or 'Smithfield Stile'. This, as is also widely known, was the only section of the Framework erected in the first phase of the common's construction. Some question whether its designers ever intended the structure to evolve beyond the initial dimensions of what is now often referred to as 'First Build'. The precise dimensions of 'First Build' are a point of contention. The 'secteur' called 'Central Gate' refers to the main Smithfield entry point. The bottom part of the structure has been heavily rebuilt since inception and contrary to popular belief is no longer susceptible to subsidence. 'First Build', as many studies have pointed out, seems to have been left partially incomplete, with many of the frames of the grid unfinished and structural members left projecting into space. The consensus is that this initial section of the Framework was intended to be suggestive of a fragment, that it was conceived to appear incomplete, as if anticipating its expansion beyond 'First Build'. However, there are also those who argue that this effect of contrived incompleteness has been misinterpreted and that a central function of the Vertical Common was to critique the processes of inner city urban development, of corporate property acquisition and expansion. For them, the Framework was intended to be a separate, urban entity of fixed dimensions. Not surprisingly, those who now inhabit the Framework - at least those who are currently accessible and willing to express opinions - are adamantly opposed to the notion that 'First Build' was intended to be the only build. Of those commoners consulted, most expressed the view that they were now custodians of an ongoing legacy of commons expansion, and that although some extensions or 'grafts' had proved to be substandard, unacceptably rogue and uncommon, the principle of expansion was an essential part of the commons project.

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