Projection by David McDiarmid

slip, while anyone visiting the Chancellery
Building would! There was a time in
history when Hitler met Emil Hácha, the
Czech president just as Czechoslovakia
was being invaded. And he’s coming to
have talks, and generally find out what’s
going on. They lead him across the marble
floor and he’s slipping all over the place.
And they take him the long way to the
office, down long, echoey corridors, up
and down seemingly endless flights of
steps ... And when they reach the office,
they’ve also set up this almost childish
scenario of a huge desk separating Hitler
on a tall throne on one side and Hacha on
the other side in a small, uncomfortable
chair – it’s no surprise that by the time he
arrives to talk to Hitler, he is completely
intimidated and appeases. It’s a really
frightening thing to realise that someone
sat down and planned that kind of
physical interaction.
It’s quite difficult to separate
AB: it. The strategy of design
and then the more broad terms, the
ideology of design as well. It’s funny
thinking of the physical design on
one level and underneath you have
the “designs,” the intentions and
ideologies.
I was reading a book
DMc: recently, Architecture
Depends by Jeremy Till. I believe
he was making a point about how
architects tend to search for ideals or
principles about space but that there is
another major factor of architecture to
consider, which is time. This is where
it ties in with all the past and present
personalities like Albert Speer. You
know you’re building something that is
meant to last, but you can never escape
time. It sounds cheesy, but buildings are
built then they’re going to change, and
there are architects that try to escape
that, the changing of buildings. I feel
like that’s the problematic test of good
architecture that still goes on now, that
somehow it’s never going to change or
yield to the people that use it.
And in some ways it’s like
AB: what’s happening when
you make the slide models for
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