Rainy, Rainy UK

The Ha Ha and the Hall

Elizabeth Campbell Kelly | May 13, 12:52 PM | digg del.icio.us

Just arrived in the UK after an ok flight, but flying just gets harder as I get, dare I say, older? I am sitting in the bar at the AA School of Architecture waiting for my friend Valentin to set me up with the maybe dodgy place I am staying tonight.

The end of year exhibition and party is tomorrow night, so the whole place is under construction. When I walked in the front door 3 students were carrying in a giant sheet of Perspex (plexi for Americans) the metric equivalent of a 4×8 sheet and it just fully cracked across the whole sheet.

There is a pavilion on Bedford Square and some clean CAD produced landscape-y drawings hanging in the bar, where I got the usual cup of tea (when in England) and one of those sandwiches that I had forgotten about smoked salmon on a soft baguette. But like a flood it’s all coming back to me. I spent a year here as part of my undergrad education. Familiar faces walk in to the bar Mike Weinstock, Mark Cousins.

Its strange to be back, especially after just graduating from Penn. When I was here (8 years ago) and considering staying and completing my architecture degree here I thought that this was the only place for an education a place so outside of the structure of the American school system. What is the equivalent of the AA in the US? And I mean in structure one studio for the whole year, a small group of students, just pass/fail. How can you give grades to architecture school product? How can the pedagogy of architecture and landscape architecture be wrapped up in semesters, courses, credits and all of that inconsequential garbage? That what I thought and I guess I still think the same thing now.

Rest of the day super-cool. Back to the mini guest room in the council flats where Valentin lives down Clerkenwell Road. Shower in mini shower. Recuperate by watching Six Feet Under. Refreshed, back to AA to meet Valentin, who still needs to work. off to Hyde Park to see Gustafson Memorial Fountain and the opening of Koolhaas Serpentine Pavilion.