Taking place in the capital’s most exciting venue, the Truman Brewery, a vast reclaimed industrial site in Brick Lane, Tent London is the most comprehensive and diverse design event of the year, showing art and architecture, vintage and contemporary design by emerging and established designers from around the world.

Open Tables is a software application and a spatial environment, which researches and facilitates collaborative working between individuals and groups. The core purpose of Open Tables is to explore the potential for new kinds of collaborative working to emerge in spaces that combine analogue and digital modes of interaction: engaging both the mind and the senses in the navigation and production of information.

Come and see us at Tent London to talk to us about the project. We will be available at the stand throughout the exhibition.

Tent London opening times:
Thursday 18 September: 10.00 – 20.00hrs
Friday 19 September: 10.00 – 20.00hrs
Saturday 20 September: 10.00 – 20.00hrs
Sunday 21 September: 11.00 – 17.00hrs

For more information on Tent London, please visit their website @ www.tentlondon.co.uk
To find out more about our project, please visit project’s website @ www.opntables.com

WAG: Architects

Project Description: Ideas competition for development of a derelict but listed island resort and bridge/pier for UrbanSplash.

Estimated contract sum: N/A

Our latest competition submission for this exciting new project. Unfortunately, WAG was not shortlisted to procure project further. To see other entries/winner please visit RIBA competitions office.

Click to Enlarge (Full Screen)
Site Analysis:
Weston-Super-Mare operates efficiently during the holiday season, but has a lot of spare capacity for the rest of the year. Part of the brief we set ourselves is to develop a business model for Birnbeck Island that can use this spare capacity as an opportunity.

Strategy:
Create a destination that supports and attracts the existing tourist market during the summer season, providing cafes, restaurants art, live music etc. For the rest of the year, the island operates as a new university and business think tank venue, specialising in ecology, new media art, IT – partnering with local hotels to use spare capacity as student accommodation..

Tactics:
1. Renovate the pier and the listed buildings on the island to provide cafe and restaurant facilities, fully online etc
2. Remove concrete pillars and platform, and build a new, state of the art, semi submerged auditorium – acting as a music venue in season and a lecture theatre etc for the rest of the year
3. Insert a new crane/funfair like structure, which can unfold to provide lighting, AV, umbrella etc functions as required
4. Create a field of wave/wind powered lights, across the local bay

Philosophy:
The geographer and cultural theorist Manuel Castells has argued that our contemporary condition can be described as a “bipolar opposition between the net and the self”, and he has suggested that if we are to take control of our futures, and the futures of our cities, then we need to build what he calls “bridges” between what he calls “the space of flows” (ie global information and capital networks) and the “space of places” (ie the real, local world and its ecologies). He argues that places that do not robustly plug themselves into the global space of flows risk economic and social stagnation. Our approach bridges these spaces, by working with ecological models that combine and synergise natural and social ecosystems.

Sustainability:
In developing this proposal we have applied best practice thinking regarding sustainability, which is defined as working to the triple bottom line: People, Planet and Profit. We have developed a business model that turns problems with the local economy into opportunities, generating new business, culture and training.
The light field is a self powering system. We have maintained all of the important existing fabric, and have only introduced new structure where it can provide most value (all detailed specification will be according to Cradle2Cradle principles). We believe that there are opportunities for site micro energy generation – probably solar water heating and wind power… but to be determined….

Networks:
Birnbeck Island Bridge Ecology is an IT hub… kitted out with the latest AV, on-line and media interface gear
Media of all kinds are organised across the island according to Democratic Billboard principles: partnerships are formed with local councils, business and indeed multinational corporations. Space and time usage of the media infrastructure is allocated as:
20 % Art
20% BIBE
10% Local news/information
30% Local advertising
20% Global advertising

We were charged with thinking about power needs in two distinct scenarios: the expansion of the leisure spaces and activities of the home into the garden, and the bulk delivery of power to buildings, developments and events which are ‘autonomous’, or not connected to the electric and gas networks.

It was my role to constantly remind them of their companies stated goal, which is to lead the world in the transition to an economy which is beyond petroleum..

I did not get to see much of Lisbon, but there is a great suspension bridge there…

WAG: project instigators and architects

Project description: When the railway embankment running north from Liverpool St Station, parallel to Mare Street, was constructed in the nineteenth century, the century long relationship between John Soane’s exquisite St John’s church (built in ) and Bethnal Green High Road was broken. The utilitarian steel bridge that now crosses Bethnal Green High Road 5m above the pavement level, all but blocks views of the church from the high road, and completely destroys the place that must have existed between the calm white stone of Soane’s modest masterpiece and the chaos of Bethnal Green market streching out in front of it.

WAG have developed a series of optical and digital installation proposals for the railway bridge that will allow a sense of the space of the place that might have existed there during the 18th and 19th centuries to be discerned. WAG’s first ideas examined the possible construction of a huge periscope which would sit like a lid over the bridge, bouncing reflections of the hidden view of the church over the bridge. Other kaliedoscopic variations of this machine attenuated the verfremdung – or alienation – of the originary scene.
However, whilst these analogue proposals had an elegant visibility to their mechanism, this same visibility would literally sometimes block other parts of the church view not currently obscured! WAG therefor settled upon a more sublime digital option. A bank of video cameras fixed to one side of the bridge record hidden views of the church, which are played back in real time on a continuous digital screen which lines the other side of the bridge. As this screen is digital, it is of course possible to discuss what other content it might carry. This might include local community content, commissioned video art, and advertising (which might pay for the project.
The intention of the project is not to simply make the bridge (modernity) invisible, but rather involves something like a dialectical aufhebung – or sublimation – of the lost view of the church building. The project hopes to encourage thinking about the role and ownership of images and views within the public realm, and to provoke questions about the experience of historical space.

WAG have started discussing the idea with Spacia and Railtrack, who own the property.

This piece of work is part of the Democratic Billboard, an ongoing WAG research and development project. This series of urban, architectural and art ideas explores the possible future development of the emerging media, advertising and communications infrastructures within the public spaces of the metropolis.

1. Take into ‘partial public ownership’ the advertising and media infrastructures which inceasingly fill our cities.
2. Redistribute the use of, and access to, this infrastructure. For example:

20% ART
20% LOCAL COMMUNITY USE
20% LOCAL BUSINESS USE
20% NEWS
20% ADVERTISING

The Democratic Billboard is a conceptual urban research tool. We have used it to think about the kinds of socio-spatial demands that architects can articulate through design proposals.
The Democratic Billboard research project has manifested itself in different forms for different schemes. However, all of these proposals are driven by the core manifesto, and articulate a shared demand upon the emerging televisual, security and communications networks and infrastructures that are growing within our cities. The growth of these netwoks is comparable to the development of historic modern urban infrastructures, such as water, electricity, transportation. All have oscillated between various forms of public and private control. Just as these were all sites of political and social struggle over their ownership, management and use, so too is a similar struggle currently being fought over new urban communications infrastructure.
There is a contradiction in that most of the technologies are privately owned and managed, although many of the physical spaces that they occupy, manage and move through, are publicly owned.

On this project we worked within a very tight budget to deliver increadible value to the client. We were appointed to reorganise and rebrand the reception area of Central YMCA on Gt Russell St, London. We started the project by conducting a 24 hr survey of the use of the building, monitoring who came in, how long they stayed etc. We also interviewed thereceptionists and built their needs into the brief.
Our solution was not what the client initially thought that they needed, although they fully supported our analysis and design proposal.
We audited the materials in the old reception area to see what could be recycled – many storage systems could be reused within new frameworks, with new facias, for example.
There were a number of CDM challenges in relation to programme and Health and Safety, as the sports club remained open throughout the course of the works, and work had to be sequenced around the space with temporary facilities as part of the design.
When pitching for the job we partnered with a management contractor. However, due to the tight budget and programme, they pulled out, and all other quotes attempted to take advantage of the situation, and were way above the clients budget. We were able to resolve this by us taking on the construction and project management appointments, and the client taking direct contracts with each appointed sub-contractor.
The central feature of the new reception area was a concrete desk, which featured special cast mouldings. We developed the moulds and helped produce the casts, at the workshops of Pallam Precast in Enfield.This work latercontributed to a RIBA funded and Concrete Centre supported research project into the use of CADCAM produced formwork for concrete.
Date of Commission: May 2004
Start of Works: August 2004
Completion of Works: September 2004, on time for opening by the Minister for Sport.

Designed with fabricators Pellam Precast and engineers Atelier One.

WAG personnel: architects and technologists

Project description: Speculative concept for immersive 3D TV and virtual teleportation environment

Estimated contract sum: £20,000 – £1 million

Publication: Medium Architecture – Bauhaus Weimar University

InterSpace – a proposal for a communicative prosthetic space

WaG Architecture

Technological development does not simply progress through rational scientific advancement, but is also dependent upon imagined solutions for imagined needs and desires. This proposal is a response to a number of contemporary conditions and technologies: from television to bio-mimetics, from computer interfaces to mobile phones and nano – technology. It starts with a proposition that is realisable now at the level of art research. A projected synthesis and development of the entertainment industry and bio-technology, it then suggests a line of development for a number of near future technologies. This product, called InterSpace, would provide:

- 3D immersive television
- Virtual transport and travel – ‘Teleportation’
- Virtual Sex
- Prosthetic environment
- Body based interface environment to computer/internet

The preliminary version of the scheme would be a spatial constellation not unlike a swimming pool filled with small balls. These balls, hereafter called ‘Monads’, should be thought of as 3D pixels. In the more advanced versions they should be thought of as both 3D pixels and atoms. The InterSpace is an environment full of monads. The participants would fully immerse themselves into this technological plasma.

First generation Monad specifications:

(IMAGE 6.7: WaG Architecture, InterSpace Generation One (2002))

- Perforated or otherwise allowing air through
- Variable visual state: either transparent, or emitting light and colour
- Being aware of their state and location

On this basis, an immersive 3D televisual environment can be constructed now. It would require an overseeing computer to hold the overall spatial image (or sequence of images) – and would tell any particular Monad what colour or transparency it needed to be, depending on where it is in the image space. The media surface expands into media space.

Such a space would first be held in a gallery or similar. It would become a product to be sold to the very rich initially. Later, instead of ever bigger TV sets, there might be InterSpace rooms in every house. Once many Interspaces are operational, they would network and communicate. Monads, or other sensors, would see participants in the space. Their image could be broadcast to another InterSpace, allowing participants to communicate with one another.

Second generation Monad specifications:

(IMAGE 8: WaG Architecture, InterSpace Generation Two (2002))

- ability to vary in size
- ability to stick together as necessary to make resistant form (whether temporarily bonded by electro-magnetic, chemical or other forces)

This would allow the dynamic construction of physical forms within the image space. The degree of sophistication of these spatial images would depend upon the resolution of the Monads (i.e. dependent on size.) As a communicative environment, it would allow not just the image of other participants within the space, but also their physical double.

Third generation Monad specifications:

(IMAGE 9: WaG Architecture, InterSpace Generation Three (2002))

- ability to vary in size – including extremely small
- non-toxic – can be consumed internally, whether by accident or for benefit
- ability to be sensitive to and take information from their immediate environment
- ability to stick to human body as well as each other
- ability to communicate with human nerves, to form a second skin

This would allow the dynamic construction of solid sensuous prosthetic additions to the participant body. It would allow the user to grow new and/or remote organs. These organs might be to do with feeling information in data driven environments (i.e. new forms of body based computer interface) as well as being based on existing body parts.

As a communicative environment, it would allow a physical double of the participant to relay sensuous feeling to their real body. This allows:

- Virtual and new forms of sex, using new organs, surfaces, multiple bodies in different places etc
- Teleportation (into other Interspaces)
- Exploration of uninhabitable places on this planet or others by setting up an InterSpace there, to be experienced through another here.
- Computer interfaces: new organs to do with feeling information in Spatial User Interface environments. The user’s cognitive map of their own body expands into the InterSpace, allowing them to drive or wear the machine.

Year: 2003
Project description: Feasibility study for entrance canopy and visitor experience
Estimated contract sum: £250,000
WaG developed a new entrance experience for audience visitors as part of the ‘This is Television’ feasibility study, lead by graphics consultants Lucy or Robert.