The first I ever heard of the AA was in a description of a summer installation that stuck out of one of the school’s front windows, crept along the facade and then went in another window. I believe it was from 1993 or thereabouts. I never saw it myself but it may have inspired Thomas Heatherwick’s later Harvey Nichols window. Nevertheless it fixed an idea about the school in my head which has never completely gone away.

This year ‘Driftwood’ by Unit 2, 3rd year student Danecia Sibingo has been unveiled and it is a characteristic 3-dimensional exploration. As usual it has generated a lot of discussion on issues such is its contextualism (is has none), eco credentials (also none) and potential for human interaction (very little). So why do I still enjoy it? Well first and foremost it gets students building. I have serious reservations about architectural students’ over-obsession with 3D on screen. Ironically here they must have been pretty obsessed but at least it was done with a view to actually constructing it. It is a pavilion (ultimately a sculpture) – a yearly summer experiment, and I don’t judge it according to its architectural usefulness. Similarly the Serpentine Gallery has an annual summer pavilion in Hyde Park but they have been horrendous in recent years.

We are in the early stages of the ‘great unwinding‘ and architects have been hit particularly hard, at a point when we have been quite insecure anyway. ‘Architects’ such as Design to Production, Case and Heatherwick himself are showing us new directions. If we still want to be in the business in a few years time we may have to follow a few of them.