img(height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=2939831959404383&ev=PageView&noscript=1")

Q&A: Liam Young

The academic and thinker’s ‘Unknown Fields Division’ runs architectural projects in places like container ships or Chernobyl. Now he’s offering an MA on fiction and entertainment at LA architecture school Sci_ARC

Liam Young
Liam Young

So this MA – how come you’re running it in an architecture school?

Unknown Fields Division does speculative projects – films, installations, essays, drawings that address how we occupy space and that try and instigate change by being propositional. This won’t be some kind of predictive science fiction course; it will be about shaping the future, not predicting it. We want to give designers the tools to sketch out these possible futures.

Isn’t it all a bit high-falutin for people whose day job is building buildings?

Architects in conventional practice have less and less scope and influence in the built environment; we’d argue that there’s another way to practise. We’re not saying it’s about the dissolution of the profession; we’re just interested in what it might mean to practise as a gamer, a storyteller, a film maker or director. These are all alternative architectural career paths we’d like to develop. The constraints on design are not just physical but political, cultural and commercial.

So what’s the course going to consist of?

It’s LA, so we’re planning to co-opt all forms of popular culture. Projects could be cinema or web-based, could be a screenplay or a novel, a public performance or some kind of direct action. The most interesting propositions will use the most appropriate media to express the idea. Our job is to provide the methodological umbrella under which they can research. They can choose whatever research argument or thesis they want – the MA will be the supportive environment in which they can work their ideas through.

With all that emphasis on the intangible, what kind of flat does a futurologist live in?

A too small one! I’m an ironic hipster who graduated to a converted stable in the East End stuffed full of props and with project concept art across the walls. But I have to say, with the travel back and forth I feel I’m living more in airport lounges, my domestic mess is the state of my desktop and I seem to be occupying a whole load of stitched together junk space…

So what kind of people are applying for the course?

We’ve just gone through the first round of applications and they are generally architecture graduates looking at alternative ways to communicate their ideas. It seems architects are becoming a lot more open to discussing ideas about space and the city using different formats. We’re going to build an online community too and look at how we change ways of working collaboratively in virtual space. We want to progress Zaha Hadid’s old idea of running a diploma unit in an airport!


 

Latest

25 February 2025

Colour in Design webinar

Propose a trail of architectural interventions across the Square Mile, design an inclusive on-campus cricket centre, help establish a national waterfront destination - some of the latest architecture competitions and contracts from across the industry

Latest: City of London public realm

Fathom Architects’ retrofit and refurb of four Clerkenwell warehouses creates extra space, order – and fun – while improving thermal performance, writes Jan‑Carlos Kucharek

Fathom Architects’ retrofit and refurb of four Clerkenwell warehouses creates extra space, order – and fu

Delve Architects has designed a multi-use space that accommodates painting, yoga and reading while also including a kitchenette and guest-sleeping

Delve Architects’ multi-use space accommodates painting, yoga, reading and sleeping

A 9m-high section of the Smithsons’ now-demolished Robin Hood Gardens housing estate will be on display at V&A East Storehouse when it opens at the Olympic Park this May

A section from the Smithsons' Robin Hood Gardens will be on display at the V&A's new east London outpost