PHOTOS: Dook | WORDS: Alma Viviers
Guy Adam Ailion Batman is the job title Guy Adam Ailion says he would want if he was not an award-winning architect, aspirant filmmaker and product designer.
What is your design philosophy?
Think hard. Keep it simple. Make sure it functions. Beauty is a product of both function and aesthetics – where function fails, so does beauty.
You won the SA 2010 National Architectural Student of the Year Award for your M.A. thesis, Everywhere is here: Architecture and a developing information society. Please explain the project.
I investigated designing a new platform and spaces for the production and consumption of information in a developing world. The digital divide means information is everywhere yet not accessible to everyone.
You also won the 2009 Concrete and Cement Institute Architecture Short Film competition for your film Litshe Le Golide. What is it about?
It’s an ethnographic music-video-cum-short-film on Johannesburg as a mining-town-turned-metropolis. This meant the crew and I had to really get into the rough of Jozi and often shot guerrilla style: 32 locations, from 4am to 11pm, in fi ve days. We got lost in Hillbrow, our own Wild West, and discovered some incredible buildings and moments we would otherwise have missed.
Much of your work deals with the urban context. Is this a fascination of yours?
I have always loved fi lm and how moving images visually narrate a story. The city is the same for me – it is both its own protagonist and the backdrop to my life’s story, constructing physical spaces of meaning that recount the stories of individuals, cultures, history, civilisation, politics and lifestyles. The city is a custodian of many secrets and mysteries worth discovering.
You utilise various media and platforms to express your ideas. What role do you think communication plays in design, and vice versa?
I diagram everything – whether it is the written word, a design concept, a timetable or a to-do list. If you can distil an idea or thought into a simple diagram, the realisation of that thought will be pure to its original intent. Communication and design are inextricably intertwined. If you can’t get the message across, the idea doesn’t exist.
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Guy also won the 2009 Concrete and Cement Institute Architecture Short Film Competition for the short film Litsche Le Golide. Watch the trailer here:
