Ballardian

In my interview with BLDGBLOG’s Geoff Manaugh, I mentioned that I’d love to see Ballard taught in architectural schools. Geoff enthusiastically replied, ‘I would love to do this — it’s actually a conscious fantasy of mine, so who knows … I would jump at the chance to lead a class like that!’

Now, all our dreams are coming true with the news that Nic Clear and Simon Kennedy at London’s Bartlett School of Architecture are actualising this concept. For the academic year that’s just started, Nic and Simon’s Unit 15 will be conducting a programme called ‘Crash: Architectures of the Near Future’. Using film, video, animation and motion graphics, Unit 15’s aim is to explore ‘new architectural modes of representation and practice’ with a current focus on ‘examining speculative, narrative architectures, based on the work of the writer J G Ballard’.

Here’s the Unit 15 preamble:

J G Ballard is one of the most original and distinctive authors of the last part of the C20th, and beginning of the C21st. His writing has encompassed topics as diverse as ecological crisis to technological fetishism and augmentation, and from urban ruination to suburban mob culture, and he has pursued these topics with a wit and inventiveness that is without comparison.

His understanding of architecture, and architects, and his prophetic visions make Ballard one of the most important figures in the literary articulation of architectural issues and concerns.From the description of futuristic houses that empathise with their inhabitants, to the bleak characterisation of gated communities consumed by sex, drugs and violence, Ballard’s world is highly prescient and ruthlessly unsentimental. Rather than examining specific texts, Unit 15 will be following themes implicit in Ballard’s writing.

Unit 15 will also be examining filmic interpretations of his writing, particularly David Cronenburg’s ‘Crash’ and Jonathan Weiss’s ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’, and to a lesser extent Steven Spielberg’s ‘Empire Of The Sun’, we shall also be looking at films inspired by Ballard’s work especially Iain Sinclair’s ‘London Orbital’. In short we shall be examining all aspects of culture that can be considered ‘BALLARDIAN’.

There’s been a good deal of interest in the architectural elements of Ballard’s schemata in recent times, providing some of the more stimulating appraisals of his work, a true testament to the interdisciplinary appeal of the man’s writing. I heartily applaud Nic and Simon’s initiative.

More information here.