Forms of Inquiry emerges from a desire to draw attention to a number of recent developments in the field of graphic design that highlight its increasingly fertile relationship with architecture. Broadly, this involves a loose network of fellow-travellers whose work mobilises graphic design as a specifically critical activity. This imperative itself borrows from the architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri’s notion of the expanded role of the critic as someone exploring the multivalent, complex and inherently subjective world around them. More specifically, it involves work that is motivated by a shared impulse to reframe the circumstances surrounding contemporary graphic practice by using intuitive modes of investigation to probe the boundaries of the discipline and to explore the mutual exchange and shared lineage between graphic design and architecture.
In the interest of clarity (but partly also to encourage a certain obfuscation) we have adopted the term ‘inquiry’ to describe this work, in particular to distinguish it from the ubiquitous incentive to ‘research’, which has long carried with it a variety of assumptions and interpretive baggage. The distinction is important; for, unlike empirical research, with its appropriation of the paradigm of scientific data-gathering and problem-solving, or the iterative experimentation of architectural modelling, the term ‘inquiry’ suggests an almost anti-methodological methodology — posing questions and pursuing paths without necessarily knowing where they will lead. Curated with this distinction in mind, the exhibition features works that have often originated as intuitive rather than analytical investigations. The strength of this unifying sense of curiosity has led to a myriad of different media and graphic forms, including writing and curatorial projects, installations, typography, interactive works, publications and speculative proposals.
Devising headings through which to understand this variety of approaches has itself become a form of inquiry that recognises the ambivalences within graphic design as a discipline. And although not offered as a set of new categories, the show groups the featured projects under three general headings. The first, Typographics, takes as its starting point the material and spatial potential that operates between the traditionally ‘thin’ space of typography and the ‘thick’ architectural space of cities and buildings. This conflation of graphic and architectural space implicates the human voice (Paul Elliman and Michael Worthington), the extension of graphics to built form (Karel Martens & David Bennewith and Radim Pesko), and the reprogramming of the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ interface of our environment (Jürg Lehni and Hudson-Powell).
The second section, Modes of Production, highlights recent work in graphic design that has been specifically influenced by architectural experiments (from Le Corbusier’s L’Esprit Nouveau to the radical ‘little magazines’ of the 1960s and 1970s) that questioned the role of architecture and education by taking publications and their distribution as sites for debate and exchange. This work draws the designer out from behind the screen, in the process dissolving the traditional client/designer relationship in favour of the designer reconfigured as editor, publisher and distributor. By utilising new modes of production, these designers expand the limits of a studio practice (Dexter Sinister, Åbäke), distribute their own information though self-initiated publications (TASK, deValence) and present a matrix of new critical positions through the use of archival and curatorial tactics (Project Projects, Will Holder).
While the first two sections might be said to focus on the specific components or building blocks of graphic design practice, the work in the last section, Methodologies, explicitly takes up graphic design itself as a way of working. In this way, these diverse methodologies expose the negotiation and motivations concealed by designed communications. Such approaches range from the adaptation of the theoretical protocols of ‘paper architecture’ and architectural proposals (Metahaven, Manuel Raeder, Experimental Jetset), and collaborative projects with architects and choreographers (Julia Born, John Morgan), to graphic interventions within architectural space (Mevis en van Deursen, James Goggin). Within these three broad groupings we have invited each of the featured designers to provide two contributions: a representative example of previous work and a written inquiry into an architectural subject which serves as the foundation for a series of newly commissioned prints for the Architectural Association. This new work aims to re-examine the increasingly overlapping practices of graphic design and architecture and in so doing hopes to compile an admitedly selective genealogy of the architectural canon as seen through the field of contemporary graphic design.
A final section serves as a kind of primer or reader, gathering together a selection of essays, interviews and other writings, both new and previously published, that might stand as representative examples of some of the allied discursive forms that proceed alongside and complement the featured studio work. Just as surely as the projects gathered in the exhibition aim to expand our notion of design as a critical activity, the work in this section enlarges the scope of what might count as design criticism. These writings can thus be understood as expanded inquiries in and of themselves, taking up and further developing issues explored in the exhibition itself.
As a supplement to the exhibition we have also invited an international group of independent editors and publishers to curate a Reading Room to be installed in the AA’s Front Members’ Room. This collection will amass new contributions as the show travels and includes independent scholarly publications, books, ’zines and other printed matter that exemplify graphically driven modes of inquiry, with a particular emphasis on those that investigate the connections between design and architecture. A separately bound publication documents these contributions, serving as a kind of suggested reading list or annotated bibliography.
Conceived as an ongoing investigative project in its own right, with associated talks and events, Forms of Inquiry has been commissioned by the Architectural Association as part of its continuing mandate to cultivate discourse on contemporary visual culture and its relationship to architecture. The work collected here begins to map out this field of possibilities, both material and methodological. Still, the intersection of graphic design and architecture is a rich domain that remains underexplored, and it is hoped that this exhibition will serve, not as a summary statement, but as a provocation to further debate and creative exchange.
This publication would not have been possible without the support of Brett Steele, Director of the Architectural Association. Brett has guided the ideas behind this exhibition and also shown a continuing dedication to the graphic design work carried out in the AA Print Studio and its involvement in the intellectual life of the school. This book has been produced through the AA Print Studio with a team of collaborators including graphic designer and Reading Room coordinator Wayne Daly and editors Clare Barrett, Pamela Johnston and Thomas Weaver. The Forms of Inquiry exhibition has been coordinated with AACP’s Shumon Basar and the AA Exhibitions department with Vanessa Norwood, who provided the impetus for this project, Simone Sagi, the picture researcher for this publication, and Lee Regan, the exhibition’s coordinator.
Zak Kyes & Mark Owens
September 2007