© DAVID CARR-SMITH 2009 : all images & text are copyrighted - please accredit text quotes - image repro must be negotiated via dave@artinst.entadsl.com
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CARR-SMITH - IMPROVISATION / DESIGN / ART / KITSCH / CHANCE
TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE p1:
INTRO & "FRANK'S CAFE" - PECKHAM, LONDON
... in process
Site-1
(return to):
BOOK
INTRO pt3 - FOUR SITES OF IMPROVISED ARCHITECTURE - NOTE 2
IMPROVISED-ARCH
IN A'DAM SQUATS & COLLECTIVES
Site-2:
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IMPROVISATION - PUBLIC & LEGAL : ALLOTMENTS
TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE
. . INTRODUCTION
...
in process As
is proper to all art, the designer of temporary-architecture must realise a
structure that uniquely fits, serves and defines its///a
purpose - and which thus achieves maximum economy. Temporary
structures (if not completely opportunistic, like those based on
squatted sites [Ref: IMPROVISED
ARCHITECTURE IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS AND COLLECTIVES
]) are - under UK
planning/safety-insurance/permanent-building regs ... # limits - only
allowed to survive for a maximum of ## months. It
befits a temporary provision symbiotic on an enduring site to practice two modes
of economy: the first is to be, in itself. as economical as is
functionally/physically possible; the second is conservation and exploitation of
the configuration of its site - unlike a new building on its assigned plot, it
must respect its supporting site's independence and continuence, use it as a
borrowed resource - but not passively: to solve its economics
design-intelligence must replace the habitual/routine-choices an empty plot
allows; must notice opportunities the existing site presents: features to be
exploited but not changed. . "FRANKS
CAFE" - LETTICE DRAKE & PALOMA GORMLEY - MULTI-STORY CAR-PARK
(L10+L9/8), PECKHAM, LONDON This
is the first building achieved by this working partnership: two ex-students of
Cambridge Architecture Faculty. They
employed the cheapest, most immediatly available and easiest to use
materials/construction methods commensurate with the project's function,
fabrication and subsequent removal, and the structural opportunities presented
by its bizarre site. Their structural initiatives are perfectly
adapted to its site and purpose - a bar/cafe that, because of its
extra-ordinary location on the top level of an almost abandoned multistory
car-park attracts all seekers of novelty, for whom it provides a furnished and
awninged terrace, which extends onto a huge 3960m
TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE ...
in process
[Written:
from 10-2009]
...
in process
Thus the town's multistory 'eyesore' - whose inadequate lifts, absurd demands on driving skills, and location in a backwater of a suburb famous for thieves and wreckers, ensure that its ten vast floors are always empty above level 2 - has become a huge plinth for the most gratuitously inventive of all the town's public provisions - topping even Alsop's Library building ... in that here the community has much more directly initiated and transformed its own means! [2]
The carpark's two stacks of open tray-like decks, which stagger up 10 levels in half-height steps alternating across its width, linked by a cascade of tunnelled ramps, are crowned by a marvellously apt device. Threaded through a huge rectangular scarlet canopy and tensioned over three rows of plank-posts are nine #m long straps that completely encircle like tightened belts the car-park's topmost deck.
From the car-park's approach road the cafe is first glimpsed as a row of posts supporting stretched straps projecting over the top balustrade. All is then lost to view as we mount the corkscrew of levels. The cafe next appears in quite different guise, as a row of thin red straps tightly stretched across the massive concrete underbelly of the final deck - suggesting something clinging to its upper side. Having reached deck-9 (the first beneath the open sky) we see these straps emerge through a slot beneath deck-10, reach upwards and thread into the cafe's canopy, stretching over the tops of angled posts along that deck's south edge. Up a last ramp we top this stack of floors and confront the whole cafe, its kitchen and bar behind a row of pillars and its tabled terrace soaked in pink light, diffused through the canopy's red . From the canopy's front edge the taut straps emerge again and cross an open space to the angled posts of the north edge, which bend them to the underfloor below. Leaning on the north balustrade, gazing down between these posts, we join with our first glimpse of the cafe from the road below.
Typical of many discoveries and inventions, the cafe's final form-solution - though obvious in hindsight (and an obvious potential in many previous drawings) - finally rose into view through layers of subconscious prevarications, disguised as a somewhat ludricous suggestion, shortly before construction was due to begin. One evening, at a bus stop 'after hours of design discussion', Lettice 'joking' to Paloma said "It could go the whole way round !" - they then parted and 'didn't talk for a while' - later ///// this final insight 'collapsed' all previous partial solutions and their correlative functions into an obvious simplicity and unity. All Lettice and Paloma's previous drawings show them marooned on top of their deck, blind to its boat-like wholeness, bunching and anchoring the straps to its edge in spite of providing posts angled over the balustrades to resist their pull. Thus a part of a subliminal idea can be performed and still the whole, which justifies that part, eludes seeing///sight !
Apart from the myriad steel joining items, mainly bolts and screws, the building's main ingredients are wood and PVA. Used scaffold-planks are layered for strength and bolted together to make the posts that support and tension the PVA canopy and its straps. Secondary structures s uch as the Kitchen and Bar, and the "Bench" of double-level seating that encloses the west end are formed of frames of new wood clad in horizontal planking. Also cut from planking are all the various types of furniture.
NOTE :
These artworks constituted the exhibition "Bold Tendencises III" organised by the Hannah Barry Gallery [Ref: Hannah Barry Gallery].
The resourceful intelligence that saw the opportunity and value of this neglected and 'forgotten' council provision, and obtained its use for art displays and associated cafe, was Hannah Barry's.
.
.
THE SITE AND PRIMARY STRUCTURE
.
.
SECONDARY-STRUCTURES, FURNITURE & FITTINGS
There are three main secondary-structures: the Kitchen, the Bar plus the "Bench", the Toilet block.
Under the canopy - sharing a continuous shelving and storage system that runs their whole length across the rear of the building - is first the Kitchen, a seperate unit which spans two post-bays at the east end, defined by two scaffold-board faciae that wall it from the terrace, protect a brought-in food-cabinet, and enclose a breeze block and metal stove built against the east balustrade; secondly the long Bar that continues as the "Bench" a rectangle of two-level seating at the west end. The Bar and the so-called "Bench" are basically a single large object whose plan was finalised and drawn in chalk on the deck only after the centre post-frame was raised. Its form is "one long snake" of four plank-faced frames with a continuous top level. The final portion of the "Bench" is the "Arm" which terminates the building's west end: a ##m long seat/low wall whose length (and the shape of its ending), because no essential practicality ruled it, was an aesthetic/sensation problem concerned with the flow of space between the open terrace and covered bar
The location of the seperate toilet block was planned "from the start" to mask an existing CCTV microwave ariel enclosure in the NE corner.
.
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SITE AT NIGHT
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FRANK'S
CAFE: VIEW OF CITY FROM TERRACE AT NIGHT x
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FRANK'S
CAFE: THE CAFE AT NIGHT x
|
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SOCIAL USE
In order to show the cafe in its condition of maximum social use, many of these pictures are from the opening day of the Hannah Barry Gallery organised art exhibition.
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FRANK'S
CAFE: OPENING DAY - ALL FROM ABOVE x |
FRANK'S
CAFE: OPENING DAY - ALL FROM LEVEL-10 DECK x |
.
.
CONSTRUCTING
The building's two main ingredients (apart from the myriad joining items - mainly bolts and screws) are used scaffold-planks and plastic sheeting (with its plastic tensioning straps).
When these pics were taken the construction was in its primary wood-structures stage. Sawing and bolting together planks to make 3 and 2 layered posts; screwing them together or onto sawn-wood frames to make 'facia-items': surfaces, built-in seats and/or shelves. Batch-producing ingeniously structurally-economical tables, chairs, high bar-stools and low-stools.
.
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REMOVING & STORING
.
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CONCEPTION AND DESIGN
.
Site-1 (return to):
BOOK INTRO pt3 - FOUR SITES OF IMPROVISED ARCHITECTURE - NOTE 2
IMPROVISED-ARCH IN A'DAM SQUATS & COLLECTIVES
Site-2:
INDEX :IMPROVISATION - PUBLIC & LEGAL : ALLOTMENTS
TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE