Output details

Air Grid and Atrium Building with Flying Circus

Assembled here is a portfolio of Watson’s ongoing research into colour, line and drawing in architecture. The portfolio documents a number of exhibitions of Air Grid structures and includes a publication, Flying Circus and a conceptual design project, Atrium Building. The research began with the construction of Air Grids, small three-dimensional latticed structures made from coloured thread. What was interesting about them was the unusual visual experiences they gave rise to, seemingly disrupting familiar habits of perception and plausibly encouraging a new sensibility to emerge. The feasibility of manifesting Air Grid experience at an architectural scale became a question of further research: can the process of making and experiencing Air Grids at the small scale of the human body serve as a model for creating Air Grids at the larger scale of a medium size building? The early work in the portfolio resulted in a successful application to the British Academy for their prestigious Sargant Fellowship, resulting in a three-months tenure at the British Academy at Rome. Whilst in Rome the work was shown in various ways and on various occasions in academies and at Public venues. For example FAR, (Foreign Architects in Rome) Temple of Hadrian, Piazza di Petra, Rome, 2010 & Spazi Aperti: The Vagabond Can't Draw, Romanian Academy, Rome, 2010. Since then it has been an invited guest at a number of group exhibitions. For example, Thrilling at a Distance, Parfitt Gallery Croydon, with Bruce McLean & Will Alsop, 2011 and Space Station Zsa Zsa, with John Walter, 2011.