Think of the walls and façades you encounter in a day. How different would they seem if we saw them as works of sculpture or relief? A wall relief freezes ideas, individuals and cultures in a material by tessellating shapes in a plane. The relief we see is the contrast between protruding and receding parts, some of which have the capacity to tell stories. The relief we feel is often temporary. It is a feeling of lightness between events, like one person replacing another on duty… but this feeling rarely lasts long. The relief we find can take the form of a wide city street corner, a railing to lean on or an awning to shelter under. This year, Intermediate 2 takes the word ‘relief’ as a two-faced term to observe and edit the city – one side belonging to material conditions, and the other to narrative registers.

Buildings lead two lives: one grounded in construction, performance and durability; the other in narrative, symbolism and cultural meaning. We are interested in the tensions between these, and will begin by looking at the surfaces and façades around us as works (or failures) of relief. Like sculptors, we will treat our drawings, models and readymades as outcomes of equal value. Through iteration, attitudes will emerge that we can apply to sites of meanwhile use and vacancy in London. From Term 2, students will be tasked with choosing sites that enable them to somehow explore a double-sidedness. What kind of relief might be produced between pre-existing and new building fabric? Between an interplay of inside and outside? What balance of stories and surfaces will be erected or eroded?

Intermediate 2 will craft architectural projects that develop from careful observations and physical outputs. Together we will make large models: fragments and parts to ease the working of ideas. We will move from detail to wall to (un)building, in order to critically negotiate the two faces of architecture – the one that exists and the one we perceive. As with methods of stone relief or wood carving, we are just as interested in the removal and redistribution of material as in its culmination and construction. Our projects will emerge amid material reverence, spatial and programmatic tensions, and a drawing out of architectural relief.