In 1971, film scholar Barry Salt borrowed Terry Gilliam's London flat and shot a film called "Permutations: Six Reels Of Film To Be Shown In Any Order". The projectionist is supposed to roll a customized dice in order to determine the order of the reels, which have scenes that vary depending on the order in which they are shown. This aleatoric (from latin alea, the rolling of dice) film experiment is but one example from a proud tradition of chance-based cultural expressions, including some of Pierre Boulez's music, Luke Rhinehart's novel The Dice Man, and -if we are to believe its programme director (and Zaha Hadid's right-hand architect) Patrik Schumacher- the Architectural Association's Design Research Lab. However, the DRL uses chance in a highly controlled way, to initiate a mutational process that opens up the architectural gene pool to opportunities for expanding the formal universe and finding innovative strategies -beneficial mutations- that allow architecture to permeate and permutate the progress of society.

The tenth anniversary of the AA’s Design Research Lab (DRL) will be celebrated with a series of events in February and March 2008. The AA Gallery and Front Members’ Room will host an exhibition featuring current work by DRL tutors and students as well as projects selected from some 354 DRL graduates. In addition to this research-based work, a physical manifestation of DRL’s vision will be on display in Bedford Square in the form of a pavilion designed by Alan Dempsey (DRL 2002) and Alvin Huang (DRL 2004). Their (C)Space Pavilion -selected through competition- will be constructed of fibre-reinforced precast concrete panels, and will be inaugurated at a party on 29 February 2008.

March will see the launch of the second book in the AADRL Documents series, "DRL TEN: A Design Research Compendium", which combines a visual survey of the evolution of the DRL with texts by the programme directors and Andrew Benjamin, Mark Burry, Mark Cousins, Zaha Hadid, Christopher Hight and Jeffrey Kipnis, among others. The collective mission of this book and the DRL TEN events is to narrate the ten-year history of the work of the students and staff, to evaluate the programme’s collaborative teaching and learning methods, and to speculate on future terms of design research in an evolving global architectural culture. 

Curators: Yusuke Obuchi, Patrik Schumacher, Theodore Spyropoulos and Tom Verebes.