Have you ever tried to remove part of a drawing with a razor blade, before trying to draw there again? If so, you will understand how the old does not quite disappear; the new finds its way not quite as well as you wish; the paper itself is indelibly changed. This act captures the complexities of undoing and redoing within an architect’s practice at a minute scale. Our digital world does seem to make these things simpler through a sequence of actions: CTRL+Z, remove, re-do. But even on screen, we find ourselves going back and forth, constantly undoing our doings but also our own un-doings. This is the curse of architectural design: results are never reached by a linear path, but come about through negotiation, back-and-forth, agreement and disagreement with others: clients, the design team, the users, the site and ourselves.

This year, Intermediate 1 invites you to consider the creative possibilities of un-doing. We will explore the palimpsests that make up space, working as much with subtraction as addition, questioning how clean-cut these terms can really be and continuing our inquiry into the disjunctions between form and use, purpose and accident, and co-operation and co-option.

Our working method combines close observation, direct intervention and drawn speculation, radiating out from Bedford Square into the city. This year, the AA will also offer us a wider domain of exploration and design which has been subject to many attempts at undoing: the spaces and institutions of learning. We will roam the city in search of such spaces, formal or loose, and will reconfigure them through drawing, photography, filmmaking, model-making and 1:1 fabrication.