Alison Smithson unpublished novel, mock-up with dummy text.
Part of the mock-up prepared by Alison Smithson for her unpublished novel '1916 ASO: The Earth of the Modern Movement'.
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Part of the work of the AA Archives is to acquire historically important examples of student work and AA related projects. This year a selection of material brought into the AA's collections include drawings by Kenneth Frampton, the manuscript for an unpublished novel by Alison Smithson. Newly catalogued work also include an important set of 25 original drawings by John Hejduk, produced for the 1986 'Victims' exhibition and publication.
Part of the mock-up prepared by Alison Smithson for her unpublished novel '1916 ASO: The Earth of the Modern Movement'.
The AA Archives have been donated a manuscript for an unpublished novel by Alison Smithson, entitled '1916 ASO: The Earth of the Modern Movement'.
This manuscript is the only known complete text in existence and is accompanied by a full ’mock-up’, with dummy text, indicating Alison Smithson’s concept for layout.
“In its detailed accuracy the writing belongs to the ‘As Found’
movement in the arts and in this connection, one of the many purposes of this writing is the integration of written material and imagery; the period material being collected, the graphics of the document composed, as the writing proceeded. Material includes maps, line drawings, posters, postcards, photographs: the majority from untapped archive sources. This writing treats history as relevant to one’s discipline and life’
Alison Smithson: Nov. 1987
The AA Archives are very grateful to Pascal Schöning for the donation of this mss.
Recently donated to the AA Archives by Fred Scott, is a 45rpm record created by AA 5th Year students, Dolan Conway & Brian Mitchenere for a 1968 Interim Jury presentation of their Diploma project, 'Computer Community'.
Examining existing information sharing and retrieval systems and contemplated the future of communications aided by computer networks, the project is highly prescient in looking forward to the digital age...
To quote from Conway and Mitchenere's own words: "Over 58 commercial time sharing computer systems are currently available in the USA - using General Electric and IBM hardware systems. New linkages are being created inducing new communication patterns for different spatial arrangements of activity places... It is anticipated that greater range of locational choice will be the result of our study coupled with a change in the form of our habitat. Distance becomes no-distance, the electronic wave is the permissive force of our future life. Our image is non-image: the visible rounded corner and latticed crane is superseded by the electronic beam, the radio wave - the silent powerful forces of our world."
Over the last year the AA Archives have been donated a large number of student portfolios from the 1950s, amongst which are a set of drawings by Kenneth Frampton for his AA 4th Year project for an office development - working in a team with John Miller and David Jackson.
Donated to the AA Archives, by John Miller CBE.
In Autumn 1986, John Hejduk's 'Victims' exhibition opened at the AA. Rediscovered within the AA Archives are 25 original Hejduk drawings for this show, together with 51 exhibition panels, redrawn by Nicholas Boyarsky, whilst a student at the school, after lost Hejduk sketches.
The project was designed for the site of a Gestapo headquarters in Berlin which had previously housed a torture chamber during WW2.
The site contained 67 structures, each name signifying the role of the individual objects, eg. horticulturalist, gardener, drawbridge man, physician, children, researcher, judge, etc... Envisaged as being built over two thirty-year periods, Hejduk described the concept as 'incremental place, incremental time'.
