The Hedgehog and the Fox An exhibition of drawings,

The Hedgehog and the Fox An exhibition of drawings, photographs, books, models and prototypes from the office of David Kohn Architects Department of Architecture and Spatial Design London Metropolitan University 40 — 44 Holloway Road London N7 8JL 27th February — 16th March 2009 Mon — Fri 10am — 7pm / Sat 10am — 2pm 5 1 3 4 2 Exhibition Guide 1 2 3 4 5 Royal Academy of Arts Stuart Shave Modern Art Deptford Creekside Thames Gateway Norfolk “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing” In his 1953 essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” the liberal British philosopher Isaiah Berlin proposed that literary endeavour could be divided into two camps. On the one side are hedgehogs, who see all things as related to one central idea. On the other are foxes who pursue many ideas at once without the need for internal consistency. The field of architecture offers as many opportunities to identify hedgehog and fox-like approaches to design (see Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter’s classification in Collage City, 1978) with all of the incumbent questions of style and morality. In contemporary practice there appear to be many champions of singular approaches to design where a dominant idea, often formal and sometimes spatial, operates at all scales, from the urban to the detail, and across all types from the civic to the domestic. In this context, the current exhibition seeks to promote an approach where each type of project and each scale of design requires a different idea. This might be formulated as knowing the question before providing a response with the implication that the question is always different and specific to the task at hand. Whilst this suggests an ever expanding field of reference, design in our practice nonetheless appears to fall into discernible areas of investigation: The distance of cities and landscapes; the thresholds of boundaries and facades; and the intimacy of bodies. Often the pressures of realising projects squeeze the range of scales that design might reach with a consequent loss of intimacy or perspective, risking the delight architecture might bring to the situation. The work in the exhibition juggles the distant with the near-to-hand, landscapes and details, with the ambition to reaffirm delight as central to architectural production. David Kohn February 2009 Temporary Restaurant Royal Academy of Arts 2008 — 9 A new timber structure stands amongst the room’s cast iron columns, accentuating their presence and framing the three major windows on the West wall. The effect is to tighten the proportions of the space lending the interior a more elegant character. The timber panelling is inlaid with mirrors and illustrations of gardens and fantastical animals in the manner of Pompeiian dining room interiors. The intimacy of dining is enjoyed in the context of an imaginary garden extending beyond the walls echoing the history of the site as the gardens of Burlington House. Stuart Shave Modern Art Fitzrovia 2008 The new gallery occupies the ground floor and basement of a modest West End 1950s office building. The design seeks to exploit the positive attributes of the site: Grey engineering brick piers in the new shopfront create a precise and suitably proportioned base to the brick clad structure above while optically clear flush glazing accentuates the first gallery’s connection to the street. The layout of the interior is more like a house than a showroom, with a deep entrance loggia, lobby and changes of direction at the entrance to each room, that heighten the gradual sense of calm and remove from the street. Heterotopia Thames Gateway 2008 A competition entry for an “Arts Space of the Future,” that proposes a new art garden for the Thames Gateway. A network of existing parks would be partially coppiced to provide carbon neutral energy to run self-sufficient facilities. With each annual harvest, forest clearings would be created to accommodate temporary events. Supporting the art garden is a building made as an agglomeration of all of the types of found space that artists turn to in rejection of the white cube. Collectively they make an interior that ranges from the domestic to the epic, from the intimate to the sublime. Deptford Creek Charrette Deptford 2008 — 9 In the face of rapid development, a charrette organised by regeneration agency, Creative Process, investigated alternatives to high-rise residential waterside properties at Deptford Creek. A strategy was developed that sought to identify and augment the existing qualities of the Creek. Rather than being one consistent space, each twist and turn of the water reveals a unique urban interior which were named ‘Rooms’. A programme of improvements including public spaces, sustainable energy supplies and low-rise flexible courtyard blocks specific to each room sought to maintain the area’s pleasurable diversity. Stable Acre Norfolk 2008 — 9 Within the walls of a 19th century stable block, new brick structures are inserted — an entrance hall and fireplace. Spanning between these little houses allows the free modelling of the building section and the introduction of a playful modulation of interior spaces. New apple pear and nut trees frame the views south across the garden to the fields and forests beyond and further divide the site into different spaces for relaxation and escape. Exhibition design and installation David Kohn Architects David Kohn, Dingle Price, Anna Crosby Photography Ioana Marinescu Exhibition series co-ordination ASD and MA&DE Exhibition graphic design James Goggin (Practise) Lecture series graphic design Joseph Kohlmaier (Polimikenos) Generously sponsored by Vitsoe Jackson Coles SCP Panopus Printing Thanks to Robert Mull, Professor of Architecture and Spatial Design Caroline Khoo, MA&DE Vicky Summers, MA&DE Chris Hosegood , ASD Workshop Nick Irving, ASD A/V Department Diploma Unit 5