Plan/Unplan

The paper considered and analysed the most recent project by Outside Architecture: 'Plan Unplan' (2017) at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery which was comprised of an exhibition and a related live event.

The ‘plan’ is a conceptual and practical requirement of architecture. The exhibition probed and articulated a concern with the status of the ‘unplanned’ and the role it plays in making architecture experientially sustainable. It set out to look at the different ways that un-planning or some ‘thing’ in excess of a plan may enter into rigorously organised constructions. The focus was on the user’s/beholder’s/constructor’s movement in and with a space; the concern being with the different ways a structured space invites or allows for its modification and some form of excess beyond the original plan. Rather than regarding un-planning as being in opposition to the plan, their interdependence was explored. In the symposium paper we also considered how parallels can be drawn with the role of exhibition-making itself as a process of construction that allows contingent and unexpected formal and conceptual threads to emerge between works.

The presentation focused on five contributions to the project: Helen Robertson’s 'how do you want to live'?, a mixed media installation centred on her film of the Rietveld Schröder House , Vanessa Jackson’s painting 'Pitch-Up', Matt Calderwood’s film 'Six Sculptures', Mary Maclean’s photographic installation 'Campus # 6' and Tim Renshaw’s paintings 'book, column, wall and notebook landscape'. Through these examples we traced out the distinct way different structures accommodate or encourage unplanning and reflect on the value these have for architecture.