George Thornton

My research focuses on the destabilisation of political and cultural constraints. It attempts to empower the disenfranchised by inducing discussions on uncertain worlds within speculative fiction. At RCA I have critiqued toxic masculinity through a reimagining of his all-boy secondary school and explored the relationship between horror and conspiracy media consumption. My methodology engages at the intersections between performance, film, animation and narrative image-making.

After graduating from the University of Sheffield, I went on to work at WilkinsonEyre where I experienced multiple on-site projects and early design stage projects varying in scale and sector. Further, my entry to Non-Architecture’s ‘[UNDER] WATER PARK’ competition won the editorial pick.

A violent performance within Punching with Bad Intentions

UK schools are a welcome mat for adult life, ignorantly imposing society’s cultural divides. They wanted to make us ‘university-ready products’, but only stripped this undervalued generation of our agency. We are blanks in this school portrait, unidentifiable and voiceless, no wonder we ‘violently’ express our discontent when our behaviour is criminalised. But our inexcusable toxicity has been enabled through a pastoral architecture that cultivates ‘boys will be boys’ attitudes.

Considering the already violent inhabitation of formative spaces by boys currently, could a controlled redirection of their performative violence become a methodology to express male discontent towards oppressive patriarchal cultures and ultimately reformat young men’s inhabitation of the UK’s educational landscape?

This research takes a semi-autobiographical approach to critique this toxic masculinity by unearthing disassociated memories from my all-boys secondary school. It asks what qualities would Hitchin Boys School ( or HBS) need to change aggressive behaviour into healthy inhabitation that unlearns patriarchal hierarchies. Ultimately, the proposal will question whether young men could be invested in a pastoral institution which does not give care for them.

Figure 01. – A Violent Education - Repressed memories from Hitchin Boys School's threshold spaces

Hitchin Boys School (HBS) is located in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. Some guy called Herbert Tompkins once said, “Hitchin is an ancient market town, full of interest”. The guidebooks eat that image up, advertising that it is ‘the principal town of North Hertfordshire retaining [that] interest. To me though it is just your bog-standard ‘home counties’ town, complete with its predominantly white middle-class population. HBS sits nicely within this conservative image, priding itself on traditionality and excellence since 1632. Our frustration towards the oppressive systems was commonly voiced through misbehaviour, even leading to the establishment of a student-led ‘fight club’.

Pupils displaying ‘offensive’ behaviour that differed from the cultural standards of the white middle class were essentially criminalised; whilst environments such as corridors and changing rooms actually enabled boy-boy conflict. Teachers effectively ignored this hyperviolence. They avoided recognising the implicit machoism from their own formative years until a boys-will-be-boys school was constructed. Spaces that teach not for grades - but to redesign masculinity - must be provided if boys want to be more than boys.

My research explores HBS’ ‘threshold spaces’. The infrastructure that classrooms are built off of and from. Where the constitutions between school and student blur, and the crucial lessons on life, masculinity and violence occur. Where patriarchal motifs, disguised as traditionality, are architecturally framed and enforced, ingraining toxicity into the school’s fabric. This observation suggests that this boys-will-be-boys culture does not necessarily exist only among the students. I propose that this culture has actually polluted the entire architectural structure of the school, slowly but violently acting on its inhabitants.

Figure 02. – Threshold Teaching – Extracting systematic oppression within Hitchin Boys School through self-developed 35mm film.

Figure 03. – Rough and Tumble – The student formed ‘Fight Club’ was filmed on student phones, and eventually found its way online (Credit: Daily Mail Online [2008]).

Figure 04. – The Church – Teachers use the platform of an assembly to enforce lessons on traditions and discipline onto the boys.

Figure 05. – The Garden – Hitchin Boys School’s Quad re-imagined as a guerilla landscape

Figure 06. – The Arena – Hitchin Boys School’s Main Hall re-imagined as a dialectic battle-scape between teacher and student.

My project investigates the processes behind a fictional HBS built and designed by the future students of HBS. As the architect in my narrative, I will channel male discontent to incite productive output from destructive processes. This speculative reconstruction aims to start a radical conversation about unlearning boys-will-boys culture.

This strategic dismantling crescendoes at the Main Hall’s stage. A platform used by teachers to project lessons on conservation and discipline down from. I remember a particularly boring assembly, with us on the balcony telepathically deciding to repeatedly cough in unison and make the day more interesting. It came back to bite us when the now-enforced silence led to a student fainting midway through because he had not been allowed to tell the supervising teacher he thought he was getting heatstroke.

The boys deconstruct this hierarchical paradigm. Gangways above the ground floor’s proto-gardens split the axis and enable students to constructively counteract the teacher’s mid-assembly. It transforms the hall into an arena for two-way dialogue. Ad-hoc scaffolding structures that enable easy reassemblage form a throng of twisting blocks that mirrors the chaotic deconstruction process.

Figure. 07 – Void – The students precisely remove a circular fragment from the Main Hall’s facade to disrupt the teachers circulation for hallway patrols.

Figure 08. – Frustration Chamber – The school fights back - behaviour-controlling architecture is installed to tackle the misbehaviour’s consequences, rather than the cause.

Ultimately this destructive space invites boys to dissect hypermasculine symbols through performative violence, to satirise if need be and extract machoism. Sustainable ‘Violent inhabitation’ can exist within precedents such as the boxing gym. Personal experiences of the boxing gym reveal its outwardly aggressive nature. Sweaty men grunt as they hit the bags; coaches call you a pussy for daring to take a break. Yet national community outreach programmes highlight one-way performative violence keeps young men away from gang violence and off the street. The gym is an arguably archaic space, and yet it is ever more successful in our contemporary society in granting anyone the agency to create a better future for themselves. My film ‘Punching with Bad Intentions reassesses traditional perceptions of ‘violence’ and asks if self-evaluating violence could teach male betterment.

The reclaimed symbols visualised are props to perform with, simulations of my past stimulations to teach self-betterment. An award would be proudly displayed in HBS’ trophy cabinets, but my vandalised trophy instead congratulates the observed playground chat that I once let slide. It is a reminder of the growth that I have achieved. The unwavering comradery observed in football hooligans perhaps indicates the productive potential for collective performance. Against the entrenched culture of HBS, perhaps organised violence is the only design methodology that can reconstruct productive spaces. Together students could protest against frustration chambers that force them to soundlessly voice their discontent.

Figure 09. – Punching with Bad Intentions - An extract from a 28min endurance boxing session. This embodiment of simulated hyperviolence critiques the performative nature of machoism that results from its behaviour. Across cultural divides, be that racially, socially or even generationally, perhaps the behaviours defined as ‘violence’ by one would be considered as ‘play’ by the other.

Figure 10. – The ‘Boys will be Boys’ Award – A shield representative of Hitchin Boys School’s House Trophies; it is satirically dedicated to congratulating machoism using ‘playground chat’.

Figure 11. – Reclaiming My Locker – A curated locker of schoolboy props -an exhibition of performative machoism.

Figure 12. – The Vegetative Villa – Hitchin Boys School’s Art Corridor reimagined as a purely student-centric space to collaboratively learn.

Figure 13. – High Road - Hitchin Boys School’s North Court reimagined as an infrastructure to facilitate the illegal movement of the revolting students.

The Arena leads onto the former roofscape, overshadowed by a temporary mechanical system that supports the vegetative villa’s constructions. Reconstructed fragments are lifted to sit within the villa’s framing like hunting trophies. The Main Hall’s ornate cladding was stripped, vandalised and duplicated to manufacture a temporary translucent timber facade until HBS is entirely reconfigured. The villa grows from the art corridor, a former one-way motorway. We would once weave our way through the throng of flailing arms. But the tight space could easily become a clusterfuck when the older boys deliberately blocked the central doors between classes, knowing we would be penalised for arriving late. Its necessity was too easy for us not to target, but perfect to construct radical learning from.

Smashing through the corridor’s architecture, the circulation has been fractured, it now weaves horizontally and vertically through the villa’s balconies and galleries in which banality booths reside in. Reclaimed locker thrones form dead space where students can periodically escape from class to do nothing but plugin: a little ‘fuck-you’ to the teachers’ obsessive need for efficient teaching spaces. It understands that enforced efficiency won’t make them more productive, instead encouraging responsible downtime so they are refreshed to learn off and on the surrounding material fragments. These suspended ateliers are micro-workshops in co-design through self-led teaching outside of classrooms. This is supported by the co-locker, a structure which grants universal access to their props, teaching shared ownership of material and space.

The sharing of design and possessions manifests itself best within the Garden, bladed fragments of material left in the architectural battlescape form a wasteland that cultivates flora to grow under their shelter. It grows a fluid exchange system within the Garden as hybrid props spring up from the collaborative supply and demand of performance and design. This guerilla exchange market is hidden from the schools prying eyes in the undergrowth. The underpass divides the landscape, serving as a circulatory backbone to facilitate the growth of this informal marketplace as students rush into it to escape from teachers.

Figure 14. – Banality Booths – Pastoral symbols are reconfigured into a space to periodically escape to and disrupt the timetable’s patronising restrictions.

Figure 15. – Ateliers – Fragments of extracted HBS are utilised as micro-workshops to learn from and on, dismantling the necessity for 4-walled classrooms.

Figure 16. – The Locker Throne - Reclaiming pastoral symbology as a seat for student power.

Figure 17. – Dismantling a School – Long Section through the Dream Garden and Boys Arena illustrating the gameplay of the students' misbehaviour.

The strategic reconstruction is accomplished through a satirical approach to the students’ dismantling of HBS. My orchestration of 'The Game', a fictional taboo sport where teams of students compete to dismantle HBS, produces creative outlets that initiate discourse and lessons from destructive action. The students extract fragments from other teams’ bases, reconstructing the extracted material onto their own to strengthen them for future game sessions. Rules do not ‘technically’ exist. The above drawings taken from the extraction zone are your best bet to understand the unwritten guidelines of how to ‘misbehave’. The nature of their play enables disruptive opportunities in every architectural moment - where they can take ownership in their action, mark their presence and tag a space that is wholly theirs - vandalised beyond systematic recognition until it no longer serves its oppressive function.

The Games interweaves both destructive and productive programmes. It is reactionary - embodying the dismantling of motifs to suggest how students could occupy an educational revolution. The threshold infrastructure visualised captures the construction process, expressing the tension deriving from the fight for ownership. Internal vs external, built vs unbuilt, school vs student.

Suddenly, we can begin to envision the reconstruction of a student-centric school. The school’s fabric and culture are reconfigured in an educational revolution where we can begin to ask if boys can be more than boys.

Figure 18. – The Game Plan – Documenting the HBS’ current arrangement after the last Game session’s scoring.

Figure 19. – Re-Assembling a School – Axonometric mapping the movement of material as a result of the game and scoring the tensions it implicates.

George Thornton

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Royal College of Art