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Technical Studies Lecture Series: Prof Sadie Morgan, dRMM, Thursday 23rd November, 6pm, M416

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

Professor Sadie Morgan – dRMM
Hastings Pier

Reinventing traditional pier design, Hastings Pier provides an open space, able to support a variety of events and uses from circuses to music events, fishing to markets.

Professor Sadie Morgan of dRMM will discuss the community-led regeneration project of Hastings Pier, which is this year’ winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize and the RIBA’s People’s vote. The judge’s citation explains; ‘Hastings Pier is a project that has evolved the idea of what architecture is and what architects should do … dRMM show what incredibly talented and dedicated architects can do: inspire, think big, interact and engage with communities and clients to help them to achieve the seemingly impossible; this is a great message for young architects following in their footsteps.’

Sadie is a founding director of dRMM with Alex de Rijke and Philip Marsh. Over her 20-year career Sadie has had an increasingly significant role in the advocacy of design and architecture through her professional practice and her advisory roles. Sadie is currently chairing the Independent Design Panel for High Speed Two (HS2), reporting directly to the Secretary of State. She is one of ten commissioners for the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) led by former Cabinet Minister Lord Adonis, and a commissioner for the Thames Estuary 2050 Growth Commission. In 2017, she was appointed as a Mayor’s design advocate for the Greater London Authority and she is Professor of Interiors in the Department of Architecture at Westminster.

For lecture details please contact Will McLean w.f.mclean@westminster.ac.uk

When: Thursday 23rd November, 6pm, Room M416

Where: Department of Architecture, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

Architecture Research Forum: “In What Style Should We Build” Shahed Saleem, 23rd November, Erskine Room, 5th Floor, 13:00 – 14:00

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Shahed Saleem: In What Style Should We Build?

In what style should we build? This question, which has resonated throughout European architectural history for some 150 years, is revisited and reapplied in my talk to the predicament of mosque design in Britain today. Style became an existential battleground for the Victorians, representing contested notions of morality, identity, nostalgia and historicism in a period of self-doubt and reinvention. I argue that Muslim architecture in Britain, and in the West more broadly, where diverse Muslim communities are building as diasporic minority communities, is entwined in similar negotiations of identity and positioning.

Drawing from my research into the architectural and social history of the British mosque, I will provide an historical overview of mosque architecture in Britain, and will set out what I see as its current predicaments. Alongside this, drawing from my own design practice and experiences of working with Muslim communities, I will also suggest my own responses to the questions raised.

Shahed Saleem teaches at the University of Westminster and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Bartlett, Survey of London, and a practising architect.

The Architecture Research Forum is a seminar series hosted by the Architecture + Cities Research Group where staff present work-in-progress for discussion.

ALL WELCOME!

Where: Erskine Room (M/523), Marylebone Campus

When: Thursday 23rd November, 13:00-14:00

UnBox 2017 Design Competition – Deadline 15th January 2018

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The world today has become aware of the reckless utilization of natural resources and is now making conscious efforts to move towards a sustainable future. In this endeavor, it has become imperative to rethink our approach towards building materials to ease the pressure on the conventional ones.

The Shipping Container is one such potential building material that boasts of good structural quality, can be recycled easily and is universally available. With over two million unused containers docked at ports around the world, the UnBox 2017 aims to explore the prospective functionality of these as efficient structural components that aid in the creation of ingenious ideas and in reimagining sustainability.

UnBox 2017 intends to illustrate the inventive functionality of the material to the masses by using the containers to craft spaces in the public realm. The competition wants to enhance the future of public spaces with material innovation that fosters disruptive architecture and sustainability.

How can an ingenious, disruptive idea enhance our world’s future and create a sustainable living for all?

Early Registration Ends: 8th December 2017

Regular Registration Begins: 9th December 2017

Regular Registration Ends: 8th January 2018

Submission Ends: 15th January 2018

Announcement of the Winner: 15th February 2018

You can access more information and download the brief here.

DS13’s Dagmar Zvonickova Winner of the CTBUH 2017 Student Competition!

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Congratulations to Dagmar Zvonickova, a MArch DS13 student who won a first prize in the prestigious CTBUH 2017 student competition in Sydney, Australia.

Well done to DS13‘s tutors Andrei Martin and Andrew Yau for their support to Dagmar in development of her project.

Technical Studies Lecture Series: Prof John Chilton, Tonight 9th November, 6pm, M416

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The next guest in the Technical Studies Lecture Series will be Prof John Chilton from Nottingham University, who will give a lecture titled “Timber Grid Shells”.

When: Thursday 9th November, 6pm

Where: Room M416, Marylebone Campus, NW1 5LS

All welcome!

 

Congrats to Arthur Mamou-Mani one of RIBA J Rising Stars 2017!

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Congratulations to Arthur Mamou-Mani, the director of Mamou-Mani Architects and an MArch DS10 tutor who has been selected as one of the RIBA Journal‘s Rising Stars 2017!

The winning Cohort 2017 has been selected from 16 shortlisted architects, all of whom have qualified professionally within the last 10 years.

This year’s award includes many young practices as well as architects who moved into project management, diversified into digital fabrication or took up charity work. While no one would advocate another financial crisis, it is often said that they breed creativity and spur on new thinking. The 2017 Rising Stars cohort is a testament to that. Let’s see where they take it over the next 10 years. (RIBA Journal)

Read more about Arthur and his work here.

DS22 Students Participate in “Here, There, Everywhere” Exhibition _ Opening at P21 Gallery, Tonight 7th November at 6.30pm

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Artists, architects, actors, teachers, photographers, film makers and families get together in London and Gaza to inaugurate the exhibition Here, There, Everywhere.

Join us at P21 gallery 6.30 pm today –with a live streaming from Gaza at 7 pm — and get a taste of the work from an adaptation of of Tolstoy’s War and Peace to installations by postgraduate students of architecture from DS22 University of Westminster, to self-build initiatives for reconstruction by Palestine Regeneration Team (PART), the works will reflect on moments of hope to celebrate life.

This is part of a great initiative by Az Theatre to mark 10 years of collaboration with Gaza.

Event Curator: Jonathan Chadwick

When: 7th November 6.30pm

Where: PS21 gallery, 21-27 Chalton Street, London NW1 1JD

Read more here.

DS23’s Crista Popescu Reflects on Angela Brady’s Lecture at the Alumni Lecture Series, WAS

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On Tuesday 24th October, Angela Brady, the Co-Founder of Brady Mallalieu Architects, past president of RIBA (2011-2013) currently a Design Council CABE ‘Built Environment Expert’ as well as President of the Architects Benevolent Society,  launched the Alumni Lecture Series organised by Westminster Architecture Society, and gave a talk titled “What it Takes to Design Great Social Spaces.”

Crista Popescu, MArch DS23 student and the president of the Westminster Architecture Society, reflected on Angela Brady’s visit in her recent blog post.

Read an excerpt from her blog below or the full text here.

Her talk focused on how to build “sociable” buildings, as in making sure that today’s high density housing and office buildings offer suitable opportunity for users to meet and socialise. BradyMallalieu designed buildings seem to do just that, with social spaces usually being decided on by consultations with community groups. Their buildings have an elegant appearance, despite using robust materials and detailing.

Some of the things that dwelt in my mind were related to their approach to practice. In Mastmaker Rd project, the practice offered the client an alternative brief that included tenure homes, having an obvious impact on the community that can now afford to buy and live in the new development. At Ivy Hall the architects brought the community together to consider the feasibility of a community centre integrated in the already planned rented social housing development. For the St. Catherine’s Foyer, they put forward the idea to Dublin City Council  although it hasn’t been done yet in Ireland (see foyer.net to read more about the concept). In all these projects, the architects took initiative to improve on the brief as much as they could. It’s a skill to know how to approach the client and the community and understand the specific politics/circumstances of the situation and – most importantly – navigate around it so as to negotiate in your favor.

You can also watch the talk in full here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx1crxO1V9c&feature=youtu.be

Call for Papers: Monsoon Waters _ Deadline 8th January 2018

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Monsoon Waters

Call for Papers

Deadline: 08 January 2018

Symposium Dates: 12-13 April 2018

Venue: University of Westminster, London, UK

Proposals for papers are invited for Monsoon Waters, the second in a series of symposia convened by Monsoon Assemblages, a research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

We live in a world where political geography and spatial planning have assumed permanent and easily observable divides between land, sea and air. Land is understood as solid, stable, divisible and the basis of human habitation; the sea is understood as liquid, mobile, indivisible, and hostile to human settlement; air is understood as gaseous, mobile, invisible and indispensable to human life. The monsoon cuts across these divisions. It inundates lived environments every year, connecting land with sea and sky. It is a spatial practice that reorganises air, water, land, settlements, cities, buildings and bodies through heat, wind, rain, inundation, saturation and flow. It unites science with politics and policy with affect. Today climate change is disrupting its cycles and explosive social and economic growth and rapid urbanisation are increasing the uncertainty of its effects. How can spatial design and the environmental humanities respond to these conditions by drawing on the monsoon as a template for spatial theory, analysis and design practice?

In order to deepen its responses to these questions Monsoon Assemblages is convening three symposia between 2017 and 2019 framed by the states of matter connected by the monsoon – air, water and ground. Monsoon [+ other] Airs took place in April 2017. The second symposium, Monsoon Waters will take place on 12-13 April 2018. It will comprise inter-disciplinary panels, key-note addresses and an exhibition and aims to bring together established and young scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines, literatures, knowledge systems and practices (theoretical, empirical, political, aesthetic, everyday) to engage in conversations about the ontologies, epistemologies, histories, politics and practices of monsoon waters. We are particularly interested in contributions that investigate

1. Wet monsoon ontologies

Following Mathur and da Cunha we are interested in contributions that explore wetness (in the air, on the earth, under the earth) as a way of being, cultures of wetness, and the urban, environmental and political consequences of attitudes towards being wet.

2. Late-modern monsoon waters

We are interested in contributions that explore attitudes towards water in south Asia since the mid 1980’s, their history, their urban, environmental and political consequences and the ways-of-being-monsoon-water that these attitudes have produced, such as flood-water, deficient-water, toxic-water, beautified-water, bottled-water etc.

3. Monsoon waters in a changing climate

We are interested in contributions that explore monsoonal cycles of wetness and dryness from the perspective of climate change, any changes in political, social or economic behaviour these might be catalysing and in new or invigorated social movements these changes might be inspiring.

4. Visualising monsoon waters

We are interested in contributions that explore ways of visualising monsoon cycles of wetness and dryness, (in the air, on the earth, under the earth) and their consequences for spatial design practice.

Confirmed key note speakers at the symposium are:

Anuradha Mathur Dilip da Cunha: architects, planners and landscape architects based in Philadelphia, USA and Bangalore, India, whose work is focused on how water is conceptualised and visualised in ways that lead to conditions of its excess and scarcity, and the opportunities that its ubiquity offers for new visualizations of terrain, and resilience through design.

Kirsten Blinkenberg Hastrup: environmental anthropologist based in Copenhagen, Denmark, whose work deals with social responses to climate change across the globe, currently centered in the Thule Area, NW Greenland.

Contributions are invited in response to these provocations. They should take the form of 150 – 250 word abstracts for either papers or creative, practice based contributions such as drawings, photographs, videos, performances, musical compositions etc. Enquiries or abstracts should be sent to Lindsay Bremner at l.bremner@westminster.ac.uk by 08 January 2018. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Monsoon Assemblages team and authors will be notified by 29 January 2018 whether their contributions have been accepted or not. There is no registration fee for the symposium, but participants will be required to secure their own funding to attend it. Participants will be requested to submit their contributions for publication in the symposium proceedings, or, potentially, a special journal issue.

Monsoon Assemblages, a research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 679873).

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twitter: monass_2016

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Harry Charrington and Julia Dwyer to speak at the AA XX 100: AA Women and Architecture in Context 1917-2017_ November 2nd-4th, Architectural Association

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AA XX 100: AA WOMEN AND ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT 1917-2017

The Head of the Department Prof Harry Charrington and Senior Lecturer Julia Dwyer are to participate in AA XX 100: AA Women in Architecture in Context 1917-2017, an international conference convened by the Architectural Association and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art with a rich programme of presentations, panel discussions, distinguished keynotes, and an open jury to celebrate the centenary of women at the AA.

Where: Architectural Association and Paul Mellon Centre, Bedford Sq, London WC1

When: 2nd – 4th November 2017

Tickets (for 3 day event): Full Price £60, Student £30

Book tickets: https://xx.aaschool.ac.uk/conference/ 

View the conference schedule: https://xx.aaschool.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/aaxx_conference_program_3.pdf

As for University of Westminster‘s own history of women in architecture, our first female graduate, Beatrice Pritchard, graduated from, what was then known as, The Regent Street Polytechnic in 1903!

Today our Computer Lab is officially named Beatrice Pritchard Laboratory.