CONTENTS PAGE

introduction [TO BUILD A FASHION MUSEUM]

chapter one [BRANDSCAPING] - the perils of the retail machine Jenners - the defunct experience Lacoste - the story of unconventional chic

chapter two [SENSORIAL INTRIGUE] - the hunt for experience Forest - the phenomenological delight Lexical investigation Koolhaas - on shopping Marshall McCluan - the medium is the massage

chapter three [INTERLUDE] - mind the gap?

chapter four [TENTATIVE FIRST STEPS] - the fast pop-up structures and slow museum lens an animation Steven Holl - storefront for art & architecture Markus Schinwald - the venice biennale 2011

re-introduction [A MUSEUM TO FILTER FASHION]

chapter five [CHAOS TO CULTURE : A FASHION SENSORIUM] Chaos pattern Footing on a boundary The Sequential Experience

[TO BUILD A FASHION MUSEUM]

FAST | SLOW examines the relationship between architecture and mass media, provocatively questioning if architecture as ‘constructed object’ is outdated, left behind by a need for immediacy and responsiveness which construction simply cannot deliver. Through the lens of the most immediate of disciplines, fashion, we will explore the reciprocity between the ‘building’ and the hyperactive communication networks which frame it and very often bring it into being.

Working in Edinburgh’s main urban shopping circuit (paradoxically also the core of Edinburgh’s world heritage site) we will examine and challenge the conventional thresholds and limits which bind the frantically fast world of fashion mass dissemination and the painful inertia of the world of architecture and construction.

Our methodologies will be devised to first develop an understanding of the responsiveness of the body and its ability, through communication media, to soak up, filter, combine and process an unbelievable range of experiences, continually forging identities from a limitless range of choices. We will then test the interaction of these abstract and often ephemeral identities with the more solid and enduring layers of architectural identity contained in the city.

Can we create a new terrain which better negotiates the fast and the slow - a terrain in which architecture is, in Beatriz Colomina’s words, “a system of representation in the same way we think of drawings, photographs, models, film, or television, not only because architecture is made available to us through these media but because the built object is itself a system of representation.”

We focus on the methodological, analytical and creative explorations that underpin architectural design, activating these explorations in an urban context. In parallel we aim to develop sensitivies to inter-diciplinary debates in architecture; to introduce broader thematic ideas in which expertise, approaches, processes and logics in related fields can interact to produce new experiences.

INTRODUCTION

The material swelled across the round bosoms of the tailors’ dummies, broad hips emphasized their slender waists and where the head should be, there was a large price tag, stuck into the red flannel of the neck with a pin; and mirror on either side of the display were carefully positioned to reflect the dummies and multiply them endlessly, peopling the street with these beautiful women, all for sale, who bore their prices in fat figures in place of their heads…

EMILE ZOLA, AU BONHEUR DES DAMES

[BRANDSCAPING] - the perils of the retail machine Jenners - the defunct experience Lacoste - the story of unconventional chic

JENNERS - the department store is an establishment that has become defunct. Born as one of the few places in the city women could go unaccompanied, to promenade, to see and be seen, the department store set itself as a stage in the city, perfectly suited to the flâneur society that grew around it. But, as society changed, as the city changed, the department store did not.Jenners may occupy a conerstone position in the retail circuit but it no longer holds its ground in the way we experience the city today - through shopping.

flâneur—“a person who walks the city in order to experience it”

The embellished historic façade of Jenners, an icon of Edinburgh, is a portal to a world completely removed from Edinburgh. Entrance portals cleanse us of any context we have gained from the street in order to reach the internal Jenners - a white box, housing further white box concession stands, that oppose such internal lack of context by paradoxically creating their own miniture worlds.Jenners may be simplified into a systematic mapping system as we move from node to node, brand to brand, with no real sense of the inbetween. There is no option but to conceed to the routes proposed, as we are fed around this system mindlessly, waiting for the next node to which we can attach and locate ourselves.But, moments of release, within the big central atrium, cut through this lack of context to reveal a space with views open to the sky where one can feel their experience heightened and a certain sense of place regained.

LACOSTE - Unconventional Chic - the experience of shopping has shifted towards the power of the brand over that of the product. Lacoste is a brand that is intentionally inert, one that filters context to preserve an identity and a presentation of itself. In the Unconventional Chic campaign, a white polo shirt is worn over a tuxedo. One unchanged basic item of clothing - the polo shirt - is morphed into something new, presented as something new, something utterly determined by other factors than that of its own unaltered form.

CHAPTER ONE

...logos have grown so dominant that they have essentially transformed the clothing on which they appear into empty carriers for the brands they represent. The metaphorical alligator, in other words, has risen up and swallowed the literal shirt.

NAOMI KLIEN, NO LOGO

[SENSORIAL INTRIGUE] - the hunt for experience Forest - the phenomenological delight Lexical investigation Koolhaas - on shopping Marshall McCluan - the medium is the massage

CHAPTER TWO

The forest enfolds us in its multisensory embrace. The multiplicity of peripheral stimuli effectively pull us into the reality of its space.

JUHANI PALLASMAA, THE EYES OF THE SKIN

Shopping is arguably the last remaining form of public activity. Through a battery of increasingly predatory forms, shopping has infiltrated, colonized, and even replaced, almost every aspect of urban life... The voracity by which shopping pursues the public has, in effect, made it one of the principal - if only - modes by which we experience the city.

REM KOOLHAAS, THE HARVARD DESIGN SCHOOL GUIDE TO SHOPPING

Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act - the way we perceive the world.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN, THE MEDIUM IS THE MASSAGE

[Lexical investigation] - exploration in perceptionThe oversaturated block of texts acts as an analogy for the oversaturated retail condition.

Perception heightens through blacking out some information and searching for the gaps.An importance in limiting sight in order to ‘see’, to think to comprehend and to experience.

[INTERLUDE] - mind the gap?

CHAPTER THREE

Look closely and comprehensively at these pictures. Integrate your reactions with all your spontaneous recalls of other experiential information of your life as well as of other lives as reported to you. Think and think some more. From time to time, humans are endowed with the capability to discover just a little more regarding the significance of their role in the cosmic scenario. You too might catch one of these ‘cosmic fish’.

R BUCKMINSTER FULLER

[The onology] - experiencing the retail circuitEndless visuals appear in such high focus that in the information-overload we

perceive little and the whole experience is paradoxically unfocused. Ironically the communication to the only sense being stimulated is not even clear.

As gaps appear visual and spatial perception heightens. With less quantity of text to process the quality with which you observe increases and other sensory

destinations can be reached.

[TENTATIVE FIRST STEPS] - the fast pop-up structures and slow museum lens an animation Steven Holl - storefront for art & architecture Markus Schinwald - the venice biennale 2011

The museum draws on fashion and its media communication as its content, but chooses to introduce moments of slowness into the maelstrom. The museum provides the filter; it becomes the ‘lens’ through which to view fashion. Can we communicate fashion through absences? We recognize the different speeds with which these systems operate and treat the spaces differently. A change in the ‘aperture’ and ‘focus’ of architectural spaces relates to the information held within that space.

We look to the retail spaces to see where they fall down. They lack peripheral stimuli yet paradoxically also lack absence; there is no space for the mind. They are overexposed spaces, but internally overexposed and rarely capture context. They are cameras set on infinitely high exposure times so that their overwhelming and disorientating communication develops blank. The museum demands close proximity to the ubiquitous spaces of the retail circuit from which to draw inspiration whilst making a fierce statement against.

Standing half and half in the worlds of the fast and the slow, the museum must be a physical filter between these environments. The point between Princes street and Princes street gardens marks a boundary between the fast and slow that exists between the north and south of this city, between fashion and culture, machine and silence.

All other sensory stimuli must be of equal importance to visual communication. At some points we may even totally cleanse our visual dependence. We must create a continuous peripheral complexity throughout the retail city that breaks to allow moments of understanding and experience.

From its condensed centre it communicates to all parts of the machine via fast light structures that ‘pop up’ over the retail circuit on fast cycles taking refuge in disused side streets, appearing and disappearing continuously, these have no sense of the static to them, directly recording the fast environment in their proximity and communicating it digitally back to the permanent museum. The permanent museum ‘lens’ integrates a slower pace to the experience and communication of fashion.

CHAPTER FOUR

[A MUSEUM TO FILTER FASHION]

We must question ourselves -Have we developed an immunity to the oversaturated layers of visual communication that appear in the retail circuit?How can we filter the modes of communication through which people are currently exposed to fashion into modes that allow greater depth of thought and experience to be attributed to fashion?

The meta-theme is about the sensoria. A sequence of experience - a progression of understanding - is vital. The suspension of sight is only acting as a kind of filter, to suspend reliance on sight, to re-set our sensorium so we may subsequently intensify experiences of all the senses in a way which reminds us of metaphysical and immaterial constraints in fashion - the wind, rain and sun on our skin, the arboreal colours, the temperatures, the sounds of the wind and rain...

Why does this have to occur in the gardens? The gardens are the only place where we can escape what the city has come to represent, and can provide the sensorial qualities the museum needs to effectively re-set our sensorium.

Senses become activated progressively, the façade dissolves according to the sensual conditions it may draw on. The programme works symbiotically with the conditions it finds.

We must experience touch, noise, temperature, weather THEN vision once again.

RE-INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER FIVE

[CHAOS TO CULTURE : A FASHION SENSORIUM] Chaos pattern Footing on a boundary The Sequential Experience

The museum draws on the chaotic content of the world to its north but filters this content into the context of the cultural world to its south. This latter world is where senses may flourish.

The museum aspires to be a focus to this chaos, to turn the fragmented experience of fashion in the retail circuit into a denser, more highly focused experience. It defines a new condition.

The forest enfolds us in its multisensory embrace. The multiplicity of peripheral stimuli effectively pull us into the reality of its space.

JUHANI PALLASMAA, THE EYES OF THE SKIN

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[Notes]1. Fluid boundary walls, filter between street and gardens2. Steps down to film screens and runway shows3. Museum information4. Toilets5. Passages down to gallery space6. Sensual galley space7. Film screens and runway 8. Runway show preparation room9. Sensual café space10. Toilets11. Film auditorium

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[Notes]1. Fluid boundary walls, filter between street and gardens2. Extended fashion film screen3. Museum information4. Public passage - upper tier of gardens5. Public passage - middle tier of gardens6. Toilets

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THE SEQUENTIAL EXPERIENCE

1. Unfocused media lens2. Desaturated circulation passages

3. Sensual gallery space - noise chamber, tactile gallery4. Sensual gallery space - rain aperture5. Low saturation circulation passages

6. Focusing film auditorium7. Sensual café space1.

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SEQUENTIAL EXPERIENCE

FLUID BOUNDARYEXPERIENCE 1:200

SENSORY ACTIVATIONEach part of the museum functions symbiotically with the conditions it finds.

The input - the oversaturated visual communication of the retail machine as it is.The output - an enhanced phenomenological experience of fashion as a whole, as a means by which to draw on the senses embedded in the city.

Unfocused media lensIts long axis acts as a fluid boundary between Princes street and the gardens; it defines a new condition between fast and slow

that the museum rests within. The experience found in the retail circuit is amplified through the media of film. With stepped seating along its axis, screens continuously show media from in-season fashion houses. These films are overlaid and out-of-focus,

highlighting our dependence on the visual to experience fashion. The fast space transforms to host runway shows.

...and the darkness was of a richness quite different from the darkness of a small room... the darkness seemed to fall from the ceiling, lofty, intense, monolithic

JUN’ICHIRO TANIZAKI, IN PRAISE OF SHADOWS

Sensual gallery spaceTaking hold of the notion of temporarily limiting reliance on sight to release other senses, the sensual gallery space envelopes itself in an intensity of shadows and dimmed light. The sequential experience

demands this space to be inward looking, but to draw on senses that can be gained from its siting alongside the senses of the exhibition. Hanging exhibition walls form the labyrinth space demand

you to ‘feel’ your way around the space. Exhibition walls have material inserts, embellishing tactility.

Deep shadows and darkness are essential, because they dim the sharpness of vision and invite unconcious peripheral vision and tactile fantasy.

JUHANI PALLASMAA, THE EYES OF THE SKIN

Sound chamberCirculation running through the space allow footsteps to echo in the vast space. The sound of the

trains from waverley, the sound of people playing in the park, the birds in the sky, the sound of the one o’clock gun all sit alongside the sound of working sewing machines in the noise chamber.

Rain apertureSeasonality and the senses that come with it can infiltrate the display of fashion, a subject that is

so intrinsically linked to qualities such as summer/winter, hot/cold, day/night, rain/sun, wind/calm. Contrasts with monotonous shopping condition on the retail ciruit.

Film auditoriumScreening a single in-season fashion house film, the final experience relates fashion back to its

fast media of film. Place derived senses are all tracable through a slit aperture above the screen. The reintroduction of visual marks not the end of sensual experience, but a reading of all sense

modalities together.

Sensual café spaceDramatic space offering apertures upwards, a new persepective to the infamous Princes street gardens.

The experience of sound, sky and smell seemlessly combine.

...what characterizes experience is that it retains no trace of itself...BEATRIZ COLOMINA, PRIVACY AND PUBLICITY

The goal is not to immerse the spectator in the world of images, but instead to enable him or her to become an active mediator.BERNARD TSCHUMI, EVENT CITIES 3

CONCEPT VS. CONTEXT VS. CONTENT