VirtualOPEN 2020, launch on July 2, 6pm!

Due to exceptional circumstances caused by COVID-19 and the impossibility of holding our annual OPEN exhibition in our Marylebone Studios, we will conclude this academic year by launching VirtualOPEN. This will be the first online annual Exhibition celebrating the work of the School of Architecture + Cities. It has been envisaged as a navigable online show in which visitors will be able to view the work of all our design studios and year groups, as well as interact with each other. 

VirtualOPEN will celebrate the amazingly innovative output that has been created this year under the most difficult of circumstances. It will promote the collective endeavour of our students, staff and support staff, and give us a positive and celebratory end to the academic year after all the gloom of recent months. VirtualOPEN will feature the energy and talent of more than 750 students, re-tuned to the possibilities of a virtual environment to produce something experimental, unexpected and exciting. 

We look forward to welcoming you all to the opening at 6pm, Thursday, July 2!

Details of how the show will work and how you can contribute can be found here.

University of Westminster Virtual Skills Academy from 1st to 12th of June [online]

From 1st to 12th June, the Careers and Employability Service is organising a series of informative and up-to-date online talks and workshops to help you to maintain your employability during the current time. 

Topics will include: 

  • how to make the most of free online development opportunities
  • how to use LinkedIn effectively
  • job search
  • virtual assessment processes

and many more!

You will need to register for individual sessions in advance, and follow the instructions in able to participate online:

https://engage.westminster.ac.uk/students/events/Detail/653220/virtual-skills-academy-1-12-ju

Performance Architecture Online Summer School 2020, from 20/06 to 11/07

3-hour classes every Saturday from 10:00 to 13:00 (BST)

4 weeks in total

Independent pop-in participations are also welcomed.

Run by StudioSynVIPA and RIPS

Apply NOW

FREE WEBINAR with Q&A

Sat 23/05 at 10:00am – 10:45am (BST)

Register Now! for a small taster of the course

Discover the interconnections of architecture

Performance Architecture Online Summer School is an exciting learning journey designed to inspire, broaden and challenge the possibilities of spatial representation and design. Architecture is combined with other disciplines including art, cinematography and performance. 

Architecture is a dynamic discipline

The course is applying the toolbox of performance in architectural thinking, towards the production of spatial actions and bodily geometries in space. It is taught by a team of London-based interdisciplinary and international architects and artists including Ursula Dimitriou (StudioSyn), Aliki Kylika (VIPA) and Eliza Soroga (RIPS).

Play with the city; be curious, be caring, be resourceful

This is an incredible opportunity for students / professionals who want to learn new skills, extend their thinking, emerge to an urban cultural landscape, be part of an interdisciplinary and international team, and diversify their project portfolios.

MORE INFORMATION

Architecture History + Theory Guest Lecture: Prof David Porter “Learning from Neave Brown: The Poetics of Habitation,” Thursday, March 12, 18:30, Robin Evans Room (M416), Marylebone Campus

When: Thursday, 12th of March, 18:30

Where: Robin Evans Room (M416), Marylebone Campus, University of Westminster, NW1 5LS

Neave Brown received the RIBA’s Gold Medal in 2018 in recognition of his contribution to the architecture of housing. David Porter worked with him for many years and will use an unpublished Dutch project, the super-dense Projekt Zwollsestraat, to reflect on Brown’s more famous housing projects in Camden: Alexandra Road and Fleet Road. He will explore his approach to the making of architecture and urban space.

Biography

David Porter is an architect, urbanist and educator. He was Professor of Architecture at the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing (2012-8); President of the Architectural Association (2015-8); and Head of the Mackintosh School of Architecture, the Glasgow School of Art (2000-11). From 2011-14 he was also Adjunct Professor in the School of Architecture & Design at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Formerly a partner in Neave Brown David Porter Architects working on high-density urban projects in the Netherlands, David was also a founding partner of Clements & Porter Architects, is a Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects of Scotland and of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Trustee of Jacksons Lane, North London’s creative performance space. He now teaches in the BA Architecture course here at the University of Westminster.

Architecture History + Theory Guest Lecture: Prof Julian Henriques “Sonic Architecture: flesh and space at auditory frequencies,” Thursday, March 5, 18:30, Robin Evans Room (M416), Marylebone Campus

When: Thursday, 5th of March, 18:30

Where: Robin Evans Room (M416), Marylebone Campus, University of Westminster, NW1 5LS

In this talk I explore what “thinking through sounding” and “sonic space” might reveal about the kind space and place we inhabit in our ordinary lives. Sonic space is where sound defines space, rather than the way space is often assumed to define sound. Examples of sonic spaces in Jamaican culture include reggae dub music (King Tubby and other tracks played on vinyl in the talk), the speaker box architecture of the dancehall sound system session, my own sonic sculptures and the paintings of the artist Denzil Forrester. I then deploy the idea of sonic space as a critique of default ocularcentric assumptions of perception, the emptiness of the geometrical abstractions of line and plane, the rationalisation of vision that provides such a convenient metaphor for hierarchies of power. From this I pursue a conception of vibrational frequencies – whether auditory or visual – as constituting the medium through which we move, are enfleshed and share our dwelling.

Biography

Professor Julian Henriques is convenor of the MA Scriptwriting and the MA Cultural Studies programmes, director of the Topology Research Unit and a co-founder of the Sound System Outernational practice research group in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London. Prior to this, Julian ran the film and television department at CARIMAC at the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. His credits as a writer and director include the reggae musical feature film Babymother and We the Ragamuffin short. Julian researches street cultures, music and technologies and is interested in the uses of sound as a critical and creative tool. His sound sculptures include Knots & Donuts (2011) at Tate Modern and his books include Changing the Subject (1998), Sonic Bodies (2011) and Sonic Media (forthcoming 2021). 

Derivas: “The reactivation of the travel diary and the fight for the right to walk”, Tuesday, March 3, 18:30, M416, Marylebone Campus

When: Tuesday, 3rd of March, 18:30-20:00

Where: M416 (Robin Evans Room), Marylebone Campus, University of Westminster, NW1 5LS

Derivas recovers the importance of walking as a research and learning tool. However, it is in the exploration of different methodologies and ways of walking where another possibility underlies, that of reconquering the world by moving our bodies through space, by practicing such an ancient performance that will allow us to recover rights that have been taken away by modern cities or that we did not even know we had: the right to the city, the right to nature, the right to beauty, the right to travel, the right to loiter…

What other rights can we regain as we walk? What new/other opportunities will London offer us if we physically walk around it and in and out of it?

Ximena and Francisco will then be leading ten days of walks/explorations across London: you are welcome to be involved.

Nibbles & drinks from 18:00

Biography

Dérive LAB is a multidisciplinary laboratory founded by Ximena Ocampo and Francisco Paillie based in Latin America, that seeks to explore, understand and inspire other (new) ways of living and thinking about life in the City. Through research, design and action, they develop projects with impact on three specific scales: public life, the built environment and everyday objects.

Ximena Ocampo is an architect graduated from Tec de Monterrey, she holds an MSc in City Design and Social Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She worked as an urban designer at WRI Mexico, and later founded dérive LAB, where she currently leads different projects with a focus on public space, active mobility and, in general, the relationship between people and space.

Francisco Paillie is a psychologist graduated from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, he later studied an MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He was Leader of Social Participation of the Territorialization Strategy of the City Prosperity Index (CPI), implemented by UN Habitat in Querétaro (MEX). In 2013 he founded dérive LAB, where he works to date as project manager focusing on public space, active mobility and, in general, the relationship between space and psychology.

To register for this event please go here.

Architecture History + Theory Guest Lecture: CJ Lim “Smartcities, Resilient Landscapes,” Thursday, February 27, Robin Evans Room (M416), Marylebone Campus, 18:30

When: Thursday, 27th of February, 18:30

Where: Robin Evans Room (M416), Marylebone Campus

The Thursday evening guest lecture series continues this week with a lecture by Bartlett professor of Architecture and Urbanism, CJ Lim. The lecture will outline his new book, Smartcities, Resilient Landscapes and Eco-warriors.

The book represents a crucial voice in the discourse of climate change and the potential opportunities to improve the ecological function of existing habitats or create new landscapes which are considered beneficial to local ecology and resilience. The notion of the Smartcity is developed through a series of international case studies, some commissioned by government organisations, others speculative and polemic. Following on from the success of the first edition ‘Smartcities + Eco-Warriors’ (2010), this second edition has nine new case studies, and additional ecological sustainability studies covering the romance of trees.  

CJ Lim is the Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at the Bartlett, UCL. His teaching and design research focus are on multi-disciplinary innovative interpretations of social, political, and environmental sustainability programmes in urban planning, architecture and landscape. He is the recipient of the Royal Academy of Arts London ‘Grand Architecture Prize’. His authored books include ‘Smartcities + Eco-warriors’ (2010), ‘Short Stories: London in two-and-a-half Dimensions’ (2011), ‘Food City’ (2014) and ‘Inhabitable Infrastructures: Science fiction or urban future?’ (2017).

UNOVIS Centenary Panel Discussion, Thursday, February 20, 6.30pm, Robin Evans Room, Marylebone Campus

When: Thursday, February 20, 18:30

Where: Robin Evans Room, M146 , Marylebone Campus

Founded by artist Kasimir Malevich in Vitebsk, ‘Champions of the New Art’ (UNOVIS) was an influential group of pioneering artists and architects central to the early twentieth century Russian avant-garde. Brief presentations by four different speakers, each with a different take on the significance of UNOVIS, will be followed by a panel discussion chaired by Tszwai So:

Panelists:

  • Richard Difford
  • Prof. Christina Lodder
  • Dr. Katie McElvanney
  • Dr. Victoria Watson

Expanded Territories Reading Group: “Unthought: The Power of Cognitive Nonconscious” by N. Katherine Hayles, Tuesday, February 11, 18:00, M330

When: Tuesday, 11th of February, 18:00

Where: M330, Marylebone Campus, NW1 5LS

The Expanded Territories Reading Group in the School of Architecture + Cities invites all college staff and students who might be interested, to join us in reading “Unthought: The Power of Cognitive Nonconscious” by N. Katherine Hayles.

Open Lecture Series: “Tech Trends on a Budget” by Adam Perry, Event Tech Live, UK, Monday, December 9, M416 Robin Evans Room, Marylebone Campus, 17:00

When: Monday, 9th of December 2019, 17:00

Where: M416, Robin Evans Room, 35 Marylebone Rd, London NW1 5LS

To book your free tickets please click here.

Adam Parry is the co-founder of Event Tech Live.

About this Event

Co-founder of Event Tech Live and the editor of Event Industry News will explore the event technologies that will trend in 2020. The session keeps budget in mind suggesting technologies that are affordable for most events.

Learning outcomes:

  • Understand the advantages of using various technologies to enhance the event experience
  • Understand the budget interface with specific engagement technologies
  • Understand emerging technology trends for 2020