London
51.5183° N, 0.1308° W
New York
40.8075° N, 73.9626° W
Ithaca
42.4534° N, 76.4735° W
Vienna
48.2017° N, 16.3652° E
Hong Kong
22.2841° N, 114.1378° E
Paris
48.8567° N, 2.3336° E

The word friction is familiar to most of us because it provides us with one of the first lessons in physics. Friction in architecture, however, is a very different story and a necessary condition for critical thinking and analytical debate.

We know that figures such as Aristotle, Vitruvius, and not least Leonardo da Vinci—the first person to record the laws of friction in 1493—all maintained a somewhat promiscuous relationship with architecture. Still, today—despite the fact that Vitruvius himself published the discipline’s first-ever treatise—most are recognized as mathematicians, theorists, or engineers, never as architects.

But how can someone who identifies as an architect—a person who has simultaneously taught and practiced architecture, a condition that is its own kind of sliding friction à la Leonardo—design a pedagogical method that contributes to the topic? The answer is not as clear-cut as the drawings in Leonardo’s notebook. Or rather, it isn’t as evident from the outset. Instead, it seems that the frictions an architect experiences—as a student, designer, practitioner, and teacher—are cumulative.

If you are aware of one friction, others may only seem to be background noise. And it seems that only with the benefit of hindsight you can see which surfaces were rubbing against one another.

Friction 1
1977
School / School
August 1978, the Architectural Association School of Architecture, 36 Bedford Square, London. A meeting between A. G. Seraji (my father) and Alvin Boyarsky, the most emblematic chairman of the AA. “What should Nasrin read before she starts?” asked my father with me in earshot, as if I was still in primary school. Alvin’s response: he could give me a list of books to read before school starts, but only if it was my request and not my dad’s. Welcome to a new meaning of school: autonomy, will, and independence. I still remember on the famous list (yes, I went back and asked for it myself): Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” The Poetics of Space, by Gaston Bachelard, and the Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, by Reyner Banham.

Friction 2
1980
Wildness/Taming
The AA had the most wildly fantastic parties, or at least this was its reputation. In 1980, while I was in my third year, the school held a Bal Masque in the style of the Beaux-Arts and Bauhaus. The theme was “Taming”—a play, it turns out, on “Mating,” which we could actually get away with calling it. The students came up with the most incredible costumes: Clark Gable and his pet Puma, Dracula (me) and his bride, and the American werewolf in London (one of our tutors). On reflection, we were perhaps projecting the fantasy relationship we wanted to have with our future clients, believing that an imagined situation could be the origin of another reality. And indeed, at the AA we never thought of architecture as a profession. It was always a discipline and a craft that would lead us to a profession (or client) of our choice depending on how we appropriated our own educations. We were wild but there was a precise elegance and carefulness in the way we had designed and disguised our tamely natures.

Friction 3
1982
Choice/Freedom
October 1982, central staircase of the famous Georgian house at 36 Bedford Square.

Alvin Boyarsky: “So what have you decided? If you are going to Zaha’s diploma unit, I would not like to hear two women arguing in this staircase.”

Me: “Well, the choice is between Zaha and the two Peters (Wilson and Cook). But Zaha still doesn’t know what we’ll be doing, and Peter Wilson is only interested in us drawing as beautifully as he does.”

I had no choice but to join Peter Cook, Christine Hawley, and Jeremy Dixon in their “Super Unit” of thirty-six students.

They promised us total independence, the ideal refuge. That freedom even determined the final project. When ten of us could not afford the unit trip to the US or secure a visa, we chose an alternative site in the UK: Scarborough, in the north of England. The forgotten 1930s resort town demanded of us as architects to be more political and more socially conscious of environments that had once enjoyed a glorious past and needed fresh ideas to be transformed.

Friction 4
1983
Melancholy/Nostalgia
I graduated in the summer of 1983 and on July 2, we went to celebrate our not-yet-confirmed diplomas at the Milton Keynes Bowl where David Bowie and his incredible yellow suit shined among millions of spectators. The performance still plays vividly in my memory, as well as the day after: the Post-Diploma Trauma (PDT) had settled in. What was I to do? Where was I to go? Most of my fellow graduates were returning to their respective countries of origin: Japan, the US, Hong Kong, etc., to work as architects. I had not been home to Iran since 1979, and I knew that it would be very difficult or even impossible for a woman to return and work in the country as an architect. The risks of not being able to travel freely were being propagated. On the one hand I felt that I no longer had a country to return to; Iran had become an Islamic Republic. On the other hand, it was exciting to see what the changes were. Most importantly all references (books, architecture, art, etc.) to Persia and the culture of my country of birth were being put into question. If these ideas weren’t destroyed, they were placed in captivity.

I felt exile was now my default condition. I would always be an outsider, not only in my own country (as a woman and liberal) but also in the UK and later in France, my eventual home. I was forced to construct an imaginary country for myself. With some help from Virginia Woolf, I determined my path: “As a woman I have no country, as a woman my country is the world of architecture.” I have often asked myself whether this was a form of nostalgia? Or perhaps I was entering a deep melancholic state from which to construct my new future. The difference between nostalgia and melancholy is that the former is romantic and debilitating, whereas the latter is constructive and thoughtful. Born in Tehran, educated in London, cultivated and politicized in Paris. I see it now: what a privilege to always be the one in the margins and never at the center, always at ease, with a home that is everywhere and nowhere.

This text has been excerpted from forA issue #1: Frictions. To read the full essay, purchase the journal here: https://birkhauser.com/books/9783035628517

Nasrin Seraji is an architect and educator. After studying at the Architectural Association and practicing for a few years in London, she won the competition “Inventer 89” celebrating the bicentenary of the French revolution. This initiated her move to Paris and the formation of her studio where architecture was treated as both a cultural debate and a critical necessity. She is currently Professor of Architectural Design at University College Dublin and Distinguished Professor of Design and Research at Wenzhou Kean University. Her practice and research concentrates on housing and new models of urbanism. Her book and exhibition Housing, Substance of our Cities is a critical view on one hundred years of collective housing in Europe. She is in the process of writing a book on the discipline of architecture and education of architects and their overlap with practice.