tang!!
THE BEAUTY IN THE BEAST was a creative experience that happened at the AA Summer School 2017. Under the direction of Isabel Collado & Ignacio Peydro the unit explored the creative possibilities of material creation.
The intention of the tutors was to provide the students with the capacity to create both sophisticated material artefacts and beautiful images that document the processes of creation. The unit was a workshop of innovation where creativity was triggered simultaneously by drawing, making and documenting the processes. Images were shared in Instagram to create a repository of actions, material species and production systems, an instant phylogenetic classification of what happened in the unit.
The three weeks of the Summer School were a marathon of material exploration in which architecture matter was deconstructed and reassembled. All material properties were explored and crossed with processes. Strength, flexibility, colour, transparency, lightness, roughness, heaviness, coldness, mildness, cheapness, glossiness, permeability were all explored and mutated by several actions such as pouring, spraying, bending, chopping, mixing, melting, painting, heating, cooling, casting, inflating, cutting, exploding, bonding, burning or wrapping to produce unpredictable material artefacts. Uncertainty was at the core of the process. Decisions were made instantly. What happened could only happen in that particular moment of time.
Materials were multiple and unrestricted. From paper to gold, from polyurethane foam to resin, everything could be used to create a full size inhabitable structure.
TANG is the name of the beast that was created with the passion of the team. It has a genetic code that includes cheapness, ease of manufacturing and material composite research. 4,500 meters of orange polypropylene rope were tangled and mixed with polyester resin to create a self-sustaining structure. A new path of exploration is open. TANG may turn blue, orange or red, it might become bigger or smaller, adopt new unpredicted shapes, but the specie was discovered at the AA Summer School of 2017.
We look forward to your reproduction and expansion.
Typology: Material research
Area: 15 sq m.
Students: Cheung Nga Ting, Qinye Chen, Valeria Perez, Dev Chawla, Siddharth Gupta, Roberto Contreras, José Ramón Rodríguez, Helga Alison Osorio Ho, Unnati, Raymond Ho, Ryusuke Baba, Harshita Gupta, Vishwam Cherukuri, Suviksha Hirawat
Sponsors/ Donors: Polimer Tecnic, Architectural Association.
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