DRL TEN

In 1971, film scholar Barry Salt borrowed Terry Gilliam’s London flat and shot a film called Permutations: Six Reels of Film to Be Shown in Any Order. The projectionist is supposed to roll a customized die in order to determine the order of the reels, which have scenes that vary depending on the order in which they are shown. This aleatoric (from latin alea, the rolling of dice) film experiment is one example out of a proud tradition of chance-based cultural expressions, including some of Pierre Boulez’s music, Luke Rhinehart’s novel The Dice Man, and – if we are to believe its programme director (and Zaha Hadid’s right-hand architect) Patric Schumacher – the Architectural Association’s Design Research Lab. However, the DRL uses chance in a highly controlled way, to initiatie a mutational process that opens up the architectural gene pool to opportunities for expanding the formal universe and finding innovative strategies – beneficial mutations – that allow architecture to permeate and permutate the progress of society. The DRL.TEN exhibition traces ten years of experimentation to find such mutations, including the opening of a brand new pavillion outside the AA, and the launch of the book DRL TEN: A Design Research Compendium.

MagnusLarsson

DRL TEN