PASW Regional Network Meeting Report
Engineering Innovation: constructive collaborations between artists and engineers.
Plymouth, 17 November 2005
Maggie Bolt opened the meeting by welcoming everyone to Plymouth and to the incredible setting of Royal William Yard. She thanked Innovate, the Fine Art Department at the University of Plymouth and Brunel 200 for supporting the event.
"The meeting", Maggie said, "would be looking at creative collaborative practice between artists and engineers through a range of presentations. Often an essential component of an artist working within the public realm is being able to work successfully with an engineer and explore ideas and solutions to what are essentially engineering issues. It has been said that the 'understanding of engineering as a highly creative art remains something of a secret', and today we hope to reveal that secret through the range of presentations we have compiled".
Maggie went on to outline briefly the presentations planned for the afternoon and then introduced Martin Woolner of Innovate.
Martin started by talking about the transformation going on within the city of Plymouth and about how the University was currently bringing all its outlying faculties into the city. He talked about the new North Hill building where the art department will be based and where Innovate are currently based. He then described how Innovate was the interface between the University, research, the public domain and business, and how they are currently working with many sectors including museums, engineering, arts, marine, and product design. Innovate is creating a research group and inviting people to join. "Although the Centre has only been around for a few months", he said, "it is already involved in much cross-disciplinary work". Martin finished by saying that he felt the process of collaboration often generated exciting new initiatives.
Maggie thanked Martin for his opening remarks and then introduced Andrew Kelly.
Andrew started by explaining what Brunel 200 was about and how it was set up. Reading quotes from Kenneth Clark and LTC Rolt, Andrew described Brunel's achievements and how art and artistic activity had played an important part in his early development. Brunel originally trained in France; his return to Great Britain gave him a very different experience. He was also married to an artist. The detail in his sketches was extraordinary and, as the age of modernity rushed in, Brunel was very keen that people should pay attention to the aesthetic as well.
Brunel 200 will see Clifton Bridge being the center-piece of celebrations, which will kick off on 8/9 April 2006 with a new lighting initiative of the bridge. "Brunel 200", Andrew said, "is about celebrating a man and his time, but it is also about inspiring new work and encouraging innovation and creativity". Andrew went on to describe the wealth of projects and events taking place, ranging through digital stories, photographic projects and poetry projects. Brunel's ideas and inspiration are the key impetus. This is mirrored in the '200 great ideas for Bristol' initiative, which will culminate in an exhibition and publication. Andrew talked about the wider initiatives being developed across the country but added that the main focus was in the south west.
Andrew went on to talk about how Brunel worked with and was inspired by many artists, including Fox Talbot, JC Bourne and Samuel Jackson. Brunel was an artist in his own right and, throughout his life, continued to sketch and paint. Andrew finished his presentation by saying, "Rolt concluded that when artists, engineers and scientists worked together you got incredible results and that is what we are trying to achieve with Brunel 200".
A number of questions were asked in relation to the work of Brunel 200, whom it was collaborating with and how various initiatives were developing. Maggie thanked Andrew for his presentation and then introduced Richard La Trobe-Bateman.
Richard stated initially that he preferred to be called a designer than an artist, and that his presentation would be about the collaboration between two people doing very much the same thing but approaching it in different ways. He went on to show a number of slides that documented how his work and interest in structures had developed from making furniture and functional domestic objects to his work on bridges twenty years later. Richard then talked about the expertise that Mark Lovell Design Engineers (MLDE) brought to his working processes and how important he felt it was for engineers to be involved in design construction.
Richard went on to describe how he and Mark Lovell had met and how, from that moment, they had both really wanted to work together. "The relationship", he said, "is about designing against each other. I take the ideas to Mark and he does the sums, making my ideas practical".
Bridge for opening exhibition of ITN building, London. Artist: Richard La Trobe-Bateman. Bedgebury Bridge, Photo: Mark Lovell.
Sketch of Cocklemoor Bridge, Langport. Artist: Richard La Trobe-Bateman.
Richard then talked about the Langport Bridge project and the process by which he was selected. He outlined the ideas behind the design and showed a model of the Langport Bridge. He went on to discuss the constraints that are often placed on ideas when designing for public spaces, and how this often did not allow for some of the design elements that, in his view, made crossing a bridge an enjoyable event. "These constraints", he said, "are due to health and safety requirements and the whole issue of litigation".
Richard then handed over to Scott Boote from MLDE, representing Mark Lovell who, unfortunately, could not attend. Scott began his presentation by showing a number of images of work that MLDE had been involved in. He talked about how MLDE prided itself on coming up with creative solutions and how, when working with Richard, it was important that both sides understood what the other could offer and what both wished to achieve. "It was important", Scott said, "to work out, within the relationship, where liability sat".
Scott talked about how the collaboration worked in reality, and specifically about the Langport Bridge: the context for the design, the regulations, and health and safety issues that had to be complied with, and how they had tried to stay as true as possible to Richard's design. Scott concluded by saying that the relationship had been going for a long time and that the end product was affected by the balance of the relationship.
Maggie thanked both Richard and Scott for their presentations and invited questions. The questions and comments touched on the role that Richard had within the collaborations and why artists could not design bridges, bridge design and construction, issues of public liability and where ideas originate from.
The meeting then broke for tea, before reconvening for a presentation by Wolfgang Buttress and Tim Lucas. Wolfgang and Tim began their presentation by describing how they worked together to create elegant solutions and they showed slides of work that they had collaborated on, including work for The Angel in London. They talked about how any piece of artwork needed a structure and therefore the work of the artist and the structural engineer was very much integrated and about the process of fabrication and how the continuous dialogue between them resulted in good design, as the role of the fabricators was also an essential part of the collaborative team. "The challenge of working in the public realm", they said, "is to highlight and integrate safety features into the design. This is demonstrated when successful collaboration between an artist and engineer happens."
The Tree of Remembrance, Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester.
Artist: Wolfgang and Heron
Structural Engineers: Price & Myers 3D Engineering
Landscape Architect: Tadao Ando.
Other joint projects were also discussed, including the National Ice Centre in Nottingham, Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester and Big Lamp Corner in Weston-super-Mare.
Maggie thanked them both for their presentation and then asked the audience for questions and comments. There were a number of issues raised including:
- how the projects are planned and evolve
- the use of new and untested materials
- how the form of the work is very natural but how the process and product are very digitized
- the appropriateness of different materials
- the background of the fabricators who had come from making objects for the mining industry and been forced to diversify.
Andrew Kelly chaired the plenary session and started by asking a couple of questions of the speakers: firstly were there any tensions within their relationships and secondly how you were innovative when you had so many standard practices to adhere to.
Wolfgang responded that they felt that the standards should be seen as guidance, affording one parameters to work within. He felt that they should be considerations from the beginning and that the challenge was to integrate the solutions. "Constraints", he said, "often improve designs".
Richard sparked off debate with a comment about artists' inability to make bridges and in the context of a certain example, he said "he felt artists were not good at collaborating with engineers".
There then followed a period of lively debate with a number of issues being raised including:
- the importance of risk assessments
- the danger of making everything too risk free and pristine
- how engineers have been forced to become rather conservative
- how collaborations are often present but invisible
- the relationship between the computer and nature and whether there was a digital form that is left as a legacy.
At the end of the meeting Richard wished to express his thanks to Somerset County Council in helping to realise the Langport Bridge.
Andrew concluded the meeting by thanking the speakers for their contributions. Maggie followed this by thanking Brunel 200, Innovate, and the University of Plymouth for their generous support of the event.