7. Manijeh Verghese

Educator and Facilitator
London - UK

‘ The objects you miss, only become more useful...’

Many aspects of literature are quite rigid. We have a lot of assumptions around how we read. We assume that we start at the beginning and must read until the end; that if a text is written and printed then it must be absorbed in a linear way. There is a lot of shame associated with ‘dipping in and out’. When teaching, I am constantly trying to work out people’s assumptions, to understand where they are going. This normally involves knocking things over, like cats in YouTube videos. You may try to steer them away from one reference, or point out that they are giving a certain resource too much respect.

Could you give us a brief introduction to your library and how it is organised?

I've always wanted to be one of those people that organises their books by colour, or something to that effect. Without realising it, my library appears to be grouped by theme or project, albeit themes that are personal to me; a collection of books on privatised public space, for example, or a section on detective fiction and case files.

Do you find yourself taking off whole parts of the collection and sitting with it?

Yes, in certain ways. I have been teaching a Unit at the Architectural Association for a number of years, but this year to get started, my teaching partner, Inigo Minns and I made a collection of our favourite books we had recently read. We then contemplated together why we had found them interesting, our dialogue beginning to unravel intertwining themes that we felt could contribute to an interesting brief. It was a fantastic way to begin the year. We have always had extensive reading lists so it felt quite natural to cement this within the process.

I ended up reading a number of your studio briefs and found them completely inspiring and engaging. It is fascinating to hear that they were assembled this way. There are a number of themes woven together, bound by the reading list.

Thank you. We found it a useful tool. I am particularly fond of books that reference other books; a world of knowledge and reference embedded in a piece of literature. Fiction or not, books take you on a journey. This year, we focused on Natureculture and an interesting discussion from Donna Haraway. She tries to understand why, over time, nature and culture have become distinct from one another, and considers ways in which they can be reconnected. Constellations formed around this topic, including Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler, science fiction books that fed into a key theme within our unit, communication. We consistently use the term, Architect-teller, as a tool to get students to define a method of translating their narrative to a wider audience. For us, this is critical.

The reading list this year was even longer than previous. Is there anything that stood out as particularly powerful?

They are getting longer and longer! For the last few years, a book that has really stood out for me has been Kathryn Yusoff's, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (University Of Minnesota Press, 2019). In only a short text, she makes reference to a number of amazing people, from Édouard Glissant, to Dionne Brand, to Saidiya Hartman. Intellectuals who have been talking about different versions of the world; how narratives of climate change and geology are being told, but experienced unequally. Yusoff interrogates how we communicate a different history, and thus, project forward to a different future. I am constantly returning to it because it always gives me new ideas and points of reference.

And because it's so varied in its reference, it allows people to extract different readings.

Exactly. It becomes a portal into other books, which is something I really enjoy. There are certain books that tend to stay in our briefs. Our unit revolves around helping students find their own form of practice so we tend to include references that critique the profession. Jeremy Till's Architecture Depends (MIT Press, 2013) is such a book, as is a collection of interviews by Rory Hyde, called Future Practice (Routledge, 2012). There is a particular interview with Liam Young where he talks about everything you don't learn in architecture school, mainly, sending emails. The realities of practice!

Which is actually one of the most important skills as an architect - mediator.

Definitely. Claire Bishop's Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (Verso, 2012) is another. It collects so many ideas together that students can explore. These ideas never seem to age, but rather, grow in meaning.

And how are you working with books? Beyond writing briefs...

I think if I hadn't studied architecture, I would have studied graphic design. Although I love the content of books and the amazing way in which they can unlock your imagination, I find their structure and how they communicate ideas fascinating. Whilst at the AA, I studied the way in which varying literary formats could convey forms of legitimacy, or weight. I re-inhabited famous architectural spaces with celebrity couples, pairing each image with a book. It was a bit ridiculous, but it unlocked a way of working for me which set the tone for the year where I made 18 different books. I repeated the same Unit the following year, but this time decided to make one book over and over again. For this, I took inspiration from a 1930s murder mystery book by Dennis Wheatley, Murder off Miami (Hutchinson Co. Ltd., 1936) which Tom Weaver, then Head of Publications at the AA and editor of the AA Files, lent me. The entire book was hand-made, first-hand evidence made up of letters, DNA, strands of hair, ripped up photographs... As the reader, you adopt the role of detective. The book then leads you on a journey in an attempt to solve the mystery with the answer concealed in an envelope at the back. The format is both bizarre and beautiful.

Another book worth mentioning that manipulates form is Irma Boom: The Architecture of the Book: Books in Reverse Chronological Order 2013-1986 (Lecturis, 2013) by Irma Boom. Boom is an incredible graphic designer, who during a lecture highlighted how she prints all her work at a miniature scale to test its legibility. At the end, someone pointed out that she should collate these miniature pieces of graphic design into a book, so she did! I think this correlation between form and content in books is crucial as it enhances a book's potential to tell a non-linear narrative; to unpack a world of disparate elements and bring them together. It becomes incredibly spatial.

I took this idea of scale forward for my thesis, questioning whether our obsession with zooming out in plan leads us to forget what it is like to truly experience space; whether the plan is the best way to represent and examine architecture? The project became a search for an inclusive room that everyone could inhabit. Ironically, this idea was very similar to that which Madeleine Kessler and I explored at the Venice Biennale.

Was there any literature that was sitting alongside this study of work? I'm thinking about the way in which you questioned the form of the traditional book, its form and linearity, and presented this in a new way. I'm intrigued to know whether this was in direct opposition to anything...

The criminal in my detective story was Rem Koolhaas in Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (Monacelli Press, 1994). It made sense to use this as a reference, because it is structured by scale. I also love the book; the way in which it is framed as a retroactive manifesto. I actually have Delirious New York in three different languages. One is a Japanese miniature format, which is amazing. For me, when Koolhaas and Vriesendorp visited New York they were collecting memorabilia as evidence of a particular culture. This fed into another of my favourite books, The World of Madelon Vriesendorp (AA Publications, 2011) which collects this ephemera together. There were also several other important references: Paul Auster, Agatha Christie, Tom McCarthy and Raymond Chandler were important in terms of detective writing; both in the way they write, but also the way they develop suspense and unease.

Another book which is intriguing is Memories of the Moon Age (Spector Books, 2016) by Lucas Feireiss, which again, disrupts the traditional format of the book. It is an interesting collection of stories about the moon; ranging from mythology, through conspiracy theories, to facts. Feireiss presents these fragments side by side, announcing them to be of equal value. In doing so, he constructs a world around the moon that we otherwise might not have experienced. It disturbs the binary between what is fact and what is fiction.

By placing images beside one another it is enough to create a distinct narrative; to engage the viewer in an idiosyncratic way.

Exactly. It highlights how there are always multiple stories to tell, questioning the validity of fact versus fiction. It is a method that Feireiss uses in his teaching.

It is interesting to think about this in relation to your own teaching methods and your aspiration for students to formulate their own practice; this unbiased method opens up multiple avenues for students to define the way in which they want to practise; to negotiate and define their own view.

Exactly. It creates multiple paths of thought, indicating how several parts can make a whole. It presents a collection of opportunities.

A lot of your own teaching discusses architecture and communication. Is this the kind of book that you would show students to guide them away from more traditional methods of architectural representation? For example, you mentioned the plan, which is often not the most successful way of representing architecture, particularly to those outside the profession. This idea of how we communicate ideas and data is incredibly important in the age of climate crisis.

Books were my own introduction to this alternative way of thinking, so I do try to show students references that will perhaps replicate that process. As I have discussed, I think the critical part of being a student is finding your own voice and then investigating how you can translate that voice from the world of academia into practice. For me, this is all about finding the correct tools to reach an audience related to your specific field.

Madeleine Kessler and I showed Feireiss' book to Kellenberger-White, the graphic designers for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. It became an important point of dialogue. We always wanted the catalogue to be a manual, rather than a book accompanying an exhibition. We definitely did not want a high-end, luxury hardback book, but rather, something you would happily carry around in your pocket, perhaps even scribble notes in. Kellenberger-White designed a series of typefaces that you would typically find in public space, from Roman lettering to carved wooden signage in playgrounds, to finger painted letters evoking handmade signs. These subverted the nature of negative signs, typically found around the UK, for example, 'Don't Loiter Here' became 'Loiter Here'. These became interesting moments in the book, whereby fonts were stretched and manipulated. We used this thinking to generate advice for people on a variety of activities, such as, how to occupy their high street, or to question who owns their data. Hieronymus Bosch's painting, 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' became the key reference for us when thinking about visual richness. Kellenberger-White envisaged the city as a forest of signs; taking everyday forms and manipulating them to tell interesting stories.

As you said Bosch's painting was your main visual reference for the project, what other references were sitting alongside this? Were you looking into urban commons, for example?

Yes, completely. Brett Christophers' amazing book, The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain (Verso, 2019) looks at the fire sale of public land in the 1970s, without the public's knowledge. Christophers argues that if we are not aware of the land being public, can we call it public? This idea becomes more problematic when it is sold without public knowledge, which has been the case since the Thatcher-era. This was observed in conjunction with Guy Shrubsole's book, Who Owns England?: How we lost our Green and Pleasant Land, and How to Take it Back (William Collins, 2019). Shrubsole maps land ownership through Freedom of Information requests and forensic research. Accompanying the book there is an amazing website which is consistently updated with new data around public land ownership.

Catalina Pollak Williamson also provided another fantastic resource for the Pavilion, Outsider: Public Art and the Politics of the English Garden Square (Common-Editions, 2015). A book based on an art installation she created in Bloomsbury titled 'Phantom Railings' at Malet Street Gardens. Here, Pollak Williamson used sound to expose ghostly traces of a fence removed during World War II. The project formed out of intense archival work, particularly on George Orwell, who was a prominent voice on the topic. During the war, these railings were removed for scrap metal. All of a sudden, these previously private spaces became public, what Orwell termed a "democratic gesture". The railings were never used and subsequently reinstated to ensure the squares remained 'historically accurate'. A fantastic project covering ideas on art, archiving and conservation.

Where were you finding these books? Was it through your own research into privatised public space?

I am currently Head of Public Programmes at the AA, which means I organise, and go to, lectures for a living. A lot of the literature I find is discovered as part of this process, as well as general collaborative discussions with members of staff at the AA. One talk I attended last year (2021) was organised by Shumon Basar and titled 'The Long Present'. He invited Skye Arundhati Thomas, who discussed the fine line between being a conspiracy theorist and somebody that deciphers connections that other people don't see. I found that to be a useful description of what architecture can be; a collection of disparate references that you pull together and use to create new work. I don't think architects value that skill enough.

It is incredible to hear more about the collaborative manner in which you collect books and the processes that sit alongside this. One thing I did notice about your unit briefs was the extent to which you are exchanging ideas with external individuals, groups and companies. I think this is a compelling way to conduct a design studio, to situate it in a real context, whilst maximising the knowledge and expertise of those in the profession. For me, the reading list and collaboration helps to tie together theory and practice, as you were discussing earlier.

I used to teach at Oxford Brookes University alongside my friend Danielle Hewitt. Our studio focused on how as a society we can collect the present, rather than the past. We were reading a lot of books and thinking about how we could organise this knowledge in a way that students would find interesting. Hewitt's background is in art history so her references were completely different to mine. I learnt a lot as our libraries merged. She was recommending a number of strange fiction books, such as The Erasers by Alain Robbe-Grillet (Grove Press, 1964), or Flatland (Seeley & Co, 1884) by Edwin A. Abbott (Seeley & Co, 1884). In the meantime, I became obsessed with The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death by Corinne May Botz (Monacelli Press, 2004) that another friend had told me about. It presents the work of Frances Glessner Lee and the amazing dollhouses that she created. Glessner Lee is known for her role in founding forensic sciences, with the production of meticulous dollhouse models of crime scenes that are still used to train the police. When we went on a study trip to New York, I found out there was a considerable collection of the dioramas in the Chief Medical Officer's headquarters in Baltimore. It made for a slightly strange, but exuberant and inspiring detour.

I enjoy referencing a broad range of books that can inspire an architectural project. Glessner Lee's work was also shown as part of the 'Burden Of Proof: The Construction of Visual Evidence' exhibition at The Photographer's Gallery. It referenced a number of works, including that of Forensic Architecture, who I am also particularly interested in and the exhibition catalogue is one that I reference frequently. Again, I find myself returning to the analogy of books being like portals.

What book has been particularly influential for you throughout your career?

It is a hard question, because there are so many. One book I constantly return to, which I actually read in school, is Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (McClelland and Stewart, 1988). It has an abundance of amazing quotes about spatiality and time. Atwood discusses time as not being a line, but rather a shape; how you do not look back at time, but rather, down and through it. A series of liquid transparencies that can rise to the surface, but ultimately never disappear. It is spatial, evocative and beautiful. Generally, I think Atwood is an incredible author. I just bought her new book Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004-2021 (Chatto & Windus, 2022), but I haven't read it yet.

I am not familiar with Cat's Eye, but it is interesting to think about its distinct focus on time. Atwood was the first author in an amazing project taking place in Norway called 'Future Library'. Atwood has spoken about the nuances of writing a text for an audience that you cannot yet perceive.

Yes, it is an amazing project! The Museum of Architecture organised a networking event recently with Anne Beate Hovind who commissioned artist Katie Paterson to create this piece. It is compelling to think about a project beyond, yet so closely related to our own lifespan. The project suits Atwood and the way in which she changes and manipulates time. For example, in The Handmaid's Tale (McClelland and Stewart Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1985), there is an afterword written by Atwood, in which the language is subtly changed to suggest it is written from the future. Following the recent television show, Atwood wrote a foreword for the book, reflecting on the relevance of the book and how it was written at a very different stage in her life, but has new relevance and meaning now. Even then, she artfully changes the way in which she uses language according to time.

And returning to the idea of major influences, while it is not a book, I think it is also worth mentioning lectures by Brian Eno at the AA. The breadth of topics he traverses is incredible. I was the ultimate fan and asked him to sign my copy of Oblique Strategies (2001).

Whilst on the topic of time, if you could re-discover one book, what would it be?

That is an interesting question. I have always enjoyed reading, to the extent where my Mum would berate my sister and I because we were reading rather than socialising at family events. She used to read stories to us as children, so I think I would re-discover those. This book, Folktales from India (Pantheon Books, 1991) by A.K. Ramanujan, is a collection of folktales from around the country that mixes the anthropomorphisation of animals, mythology and magic into its different stories. My sister and I used to be obsessed with it. I hadn't looked at it for a number of years until recently when I started working on a new South Asia Gallery in Manchester. As the project is inspired by anthologies of poetry and their structure, it felt a relevant reference. The gallery is curated by over 30 local South Asians and South Asian enthusiasts and experts. My role is to develop an interpretation strategy for how their research and stories will be told to visitors experiencing the Gallery. It is incredibly challenging to try and translate these powerful and life-shaping stories into a consistent and coherent visitor experience without flattening their meaning. It is the first project I have worked on intrinsically linked to my own cultural identity. I have already learnt so much!

All photography by Tim Lucas unless otherwise stated.

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7. Manijeh Verghese

Educator and Facilitator
London - UK

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7. Manijeh Verghese

Educator and Facilitator London - UK

Index

Educator and Facilitator
London - UK