The critical 'Pop-up' book: Reimagining London's Olympic 'Structures of Enchantment'.

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This project examines and reinvigorates the playful tradition/techniques of the pop-up book as a new critical/creative tool in urban design/research. Each turn of the page enacts a critical moment of simultaneous construction/demolition and it is possible to consider the pop-up book and urban regeneration as analogous, using pop-up techniques to reinterpret a changing urban landscape, specifically the London 2012 Olympics site. The project re-defines the pop-up book focusing on its role as a 'structure of enchantment'(Montanero 93). Conventional history of the pop-up involves study of its instructional and entertainment formats, but my emphasis is on its lineage in mythical storytelling through which the structures of fairytales are built. The particular myth or 'structure of enchantment' examined and critiqued here is the utopian myth of progress inherent in the 'Olympic Story' as a large-scale urban regeneration project. Pop-up books are referred to as 'living models', 'moveable books' or 'metamorphoses' (Haining 79), through which narrative/structural animation take place. This project draws on my film and animation experience to develop the pop-up genre beyond conventional formats, exploring and comparing the temporal and narrational structures of the book with those of urban space. The pop-up form enables the visualisation of progress as ruin inspired by artist Robert Smithson's notion of 'Ruins in Reverse' (67) in which 'buildings don't fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise into ruin before they are built.' He describes the dilapidated 'Hotel Palenque'(69) as the ultimate form of this-structure undergoing constant and simultaneous decay and renovation. Because structures literally rise and fall with the turn of a page, the pop-up book is the optimum medium through which to explore the entropic aspects of a specific urban landscape undergoing ruination/renewal. Using this collapsible modelling technique I critique the idealised future projections of conventional architectural models, exposing the mechanisms of change and creating an unsettled landscape on the brink of major transformation. The fellowship's conceptual and practical timeframe follows the 3 stages of construction time (Olympic site built), event time (Olympics staged) and unfolding time (legacy begins). The notions of legacy and potential are key, as from ancient Olympia to a multi-layered industrial East End site this project looks at a history/understanding of ruination (Ginsberg 04,Picon 00,Makarius 04) as potential-opening up possibilities of change and alternative imagined futures.A series of 3 animated books (artefacts) finalised in 1 Olympic volume will be produced which aim to counteract/intervene in the effect of tabula-rasa urbanism-animating a structural landscape from visions of the past/present/future of this zone. The pages of these books comprise theatrical installations or 'constructed situations' built out of local histories/stories, documentation and projections, presenting a panoramic and choreographic view of the site's 'before','after' and 'in-between'. A further co-authored publication ('Structuring Enchantment') and conference will explore the parallel construction processes at work in the making of both books and site and examine the unfolding time of legacy. I choose to continue my interdisciplinary engagement with the London 2012 Games using the familiar and playful pop-up book medium to engage diverse audiences and collaborators from academia to local communities. I will explore/disseminate the stories and issues surrounding the Olympic site and legacy through workshops/seminars and the production and public launch/exhibition of the pop-up books and final 'making of' publication and conference. Reinventing the boundaries of a low-tech medium I combine the site-specific approach of my urban research practice with advanced model and animation skills to investigate this high-profile and contested regeneration site.