Open Studio is an interactive project run by the School of Architecture + Cities at the University of Westminster to make its design, research and practice-based work available online while it is happening. The site acts as a real time teaching and learning environment in which the work of both students and staff is curated and documented – the work of its design studios, or its other teaching and research groups and workshops. Read more in Blog, follow us on Twitter and like us on Instagram.
This new international ideas competition launched by the Landscape Institute will be of interest to students and/or professionals.
The aim of the competition is to respond to the current debates on the design and use of our urban landscape in light of the COVID-19 crisis. Deadline 4th December.
https://competitions.landscapeinstitute.org/transforming-the-urban-landscape/
For the 2020 iteration of the annual Robin Evans Lecture, we are delighted to be joined by Eyal Weizman, founding director of Forensic Architecture and Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.
In light of the current pandemic this year’s lecture will be delivered online via the University of Westminster’s GoToWebinar account. Further details around the topic and discussion of this year’s lecture will be made available in due course.
You can register for the event on Eventbrite; either by scanning the QR code in the above invite, or by visiting:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-robin-evans-lecture-2020-eyal-weizman-tickets-125144022139Upon registration on Eventbrite your name and email address will be added by the Event Coordinator to the individual GoToWebinar registration page. By registering on Eventbrite, you consent to these details being added to the GoToWebinar registration page for the event.
You will receive a separate email within 1 working day from University of Westminster (via customercare@gotowebinar.com) with a calendar invite and a unique link to join the Webinar. Please note: This link is unique to each registrant and should not be shared with others.
Eyal Weizman is the founding director of Forensic Architecture and Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.
The author of over 15 books, he has held positions in many universities worldwide including Princeton, ETH Zurich and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He is a member of the Technology Advisory Board of the International Criminal Court and the Centre for Investigative Journalism. In 2019 he was elected life fellow of the British Academy and appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to architecture.
Eyal studied architecture at the Architectural Association, graduating in 1998. He received his PhD in 2006 from the London Consortium at Birkbeck, University of London
This series supports outstanding scholarship in the history of architecture and allied fields, building on the work of Professor Robin Evans (1944-1993). It encourages scholars working on the relationship between the spatial and social domains in architectural drawing, construction and beyond. Evans’ work interrogated the spaces that existed between drawing and building, geometry and architecture, teasing out the points of translation often overlooked.
From his early work on prison design and domestic spaces, through to his later work on architectural geometry, Evans sought to articulate the multiple points at which the human imagination could influence architectural form. His first book, The Fabrication of Virtue, analysed the way that spatial layouts provided opportunities for social reform via their interference with morality, privacy and class. In The Projective Cast: Architecture and its Three Geometries, Evans traced the origins of the humanist tradition to understand how human form influenced architectural drawing and construction, focusing on aesthetic dimensions in the production of architectural space.
This series will provide opportunities for the creation and/or dissemination of work by scholars working on similar questions of space, temporality, and architecture. In particular, it supports work that breaks the boundaries of traditional disciplines to think though these complex networks involved in the space between human imagination and architectural production.
Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows, an architect, researcher, and the BSc Architectural Technology Year 2 leader has published an article in The RIBA Journal on how the architects can use their skills to help improve conditions for the disadvantaged and marginalised communities and members of our society.
The Covid-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities and highlighted the urgency for community collaboration towards positive societal changes. The pandemic has changed our lives in many ways. My family is grieving the loss of several family members and friends (of Bangladeshi origin), living in the UK.
Research issued by Public Health England reveals that you are more likely to die from Covid-19 if you are BAME than someone who is white, and people of Bangladeshi ethnicity are twice as likely to die from Covid-19 than those who are white and British. The recent global protests for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement brought to focus communities’ collective actions to rise up against racial injustice and various social and health inequalities which have been exacerbated by the pandemic. The power of community action and collective response has become urgent for communities worldwide, whether they are affected by racial injustice, health inequality or new developments in their neighbourhood (sometimes resulting in eviction) and for all those passionate to change systemic racism and inequalities.
As practitioners and architects, we could act many ways to facilitate the voices of those who have been marginalised in the society. One of these is to get involved in local planning issues: for example, by alerting the planning authority to any new development that negatively affects low-income communities in the neighbourhood through gentrification.
I am passionate about being part of the change in my area, so volunteered to be part of my borough’s design review panel. There I have the opportunity to help address some of the issues and push the design team and the developers, to hear and respond to the voices of the community. Unfortunately, in all the recent projects we have reviewed (which happened to be led by influential architects), the design decisions did not reflect local engagement (in an area with one of the largest BAME communities in London), and showed a lack of communication with the community they had designed for. Very little work had been done towards any such local engagement in the design process. […]
Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows for RIBAJ, October 2020
To read the full text please go here.
The Architecture Drawing Prize is an international competition that celebrates the art and skill of architectural drawing. The prize is curated by Make Architects, Sir John Soane’s Museum and the World Architecture Festival.
In the spirit of many great architects of the past, from Palladio and John Soane to Le Corbusier and Cedric Price, it’s an ideal platform for reflecting on and exploring how drawing continues to advance the art of architecture today.
Entries are welcomed from architects, designers and students from around the world, in the following categories: hand-drawing, digital and hybrid.
The winning and commended entries will go on display at a dedicated exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. The winners will also receive a delegate pass to the World Architecture Festival where they have their work on display and they will be presented with their award.
For more information please visit here.
University of Westminster architecture students share “varied design approaches” across 9 projects
A dementia clinic that celebrates the joy of eggs and a dance school for the over 60s feature in this VDF school show of work from the University of Westminster‘s architecture students.
Of the more than 750 graduates and undergraduates that make up the university’s School of Architecture and Cities, nine students’ work is showcased below, spanning disciplines from environmental and urban design to interior architecture.
Dezeen.com
For more info and to see the featured students’ work please visit here.
Featured image: The Really Really Real by Sinead Fahey, MArch DS15
The OPEN2020 has been revised to more accurately reflect its nature as a rolling programme of events and an evolving platform being created by the School’s staff and students.
As a result, the schedule of events is planned to take place as follows:
Digital Employability Skills for the Post Covid-19 World Webinar Series – for all SA+C students, hosted within the construction site of the Virtual OPEN2020 platform.
Hamza Shaikh is an MArch student at the School of Architecture and Cities, who has just completed his RIBA Part 2 Diploma in DS23, and is well-known for his popular podcast series on architecture and design Two World Design.
His MArch final project “The Sleep Institute” was recently featured on Design Boom.
To read more about his project and look at his fantastic portfolio please visit here.
Featured image by Hamza Shaikh
Two cash architecture prizes awarded by the Traditional Architecture Group are available to students of UK Schools of Architecture.
There is a prize of £1000 for the best student project for a new traditional or classical design. And there is a £500 prize for the best measured drawing of a traditional or classical building (or part of a building).
The deadline for entries is 30th of September 2020.
For more information please visit here.
The Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects is offering drawing prizes to students from the London Schools of Architecture.
The aim is to encourage excellence in traditional drawing, but computer generated images will also be considered. Both RIBA Part 1 and RIBA Part 2 Students are invited to submit drawings on behalf of their School. The first prize is £300, with a runner up of £150, in each category.
Please note, due to the current COVID-19 situation; we politely request digital submissions only.
This should be submitted from your School email address / account.
Please ensure to clearly label Part 1 or Part 2 – and please provide FULL name and contact telephone number in body of email.
To John Bushell, by email to ghowe@kpf.com (Gemma Howe > PA to John Bushell)
Friday 26th June 2020 at 6.00pm.
We are closely monitoring the current situation, but hope to exhibit all entries at the Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects’ Election Court Dinner at RIBA Headquarters, 66 Portland Place – date for 2020 TBC.
John Bushell jbushell@kpf.com Gemma Howe ghowe@kpf.com
Featured image: Part 2 Prizewinner 2013 – Jessica Tettelaar, University of Westminster
Matteo Cainer is launching a new curatorial initiative, an international OPEN CALL to all Architecture Graduates of 2020, to imagine and sketch a new extraordinary world capable of transforming the pandemic crisis into an opportunity to foster new lines of thinking, innovation and research. Envisioning radical strategies and alternative behavioural models for the future of our cities will provide an opportunity to question our current mode of living and create a new resilient global narrative.
The graduating class of 2020 has been asked to change their long-standing routines of education, to work and learn remotely, and to graduate in their rooms. Yet they rose to the challenge! We admire their strength, their will, their passion and perseverance in such extraordinary times. We believe, therefore, that it is time to give back to them, because the future IS an opportunity and we want them to be able to seize it and to make their voices heard on the world stage.
It is for this reason that Matteo Cainer is launching this ‘Call to action’ specifically to the 2020 Graduates. This is their opportunity and their moment to put forward their ideas and their visions. He is asking them to imagine and sketch not only how the future will change, after the pandemic, but how they WANT IT TO CHANGE.
One thing is clear: in these times of uncertainty, we need to anticipate, evolve and transform our urban and collective spaces, internal environments and objects of use, by not only decorticating old models and welcoming hybrid negotiations with new realities, but generating new paradigms of living that integrate nature and social thinking into our designs. Enhancing the humanity of projects and fostering a comprehensive sensibility and active social empathy will help us create the necessary foundations to build alternative and more generous human-centric solutions.
The aim is to move beyond the current scene, dominated by cyberspace, video simulation and the fashionable image parade and instead promote the ‘sketch’ and its power to clearly convey innovative ideas and revolutionary concepts. In this pause of accelerated online immersive environments we want to illustrate how the power of a simple idea can be a catalyst for future change. Graduates have free rein to choose their focus of interest in how they think the pandemic will inform and should inform our imminent new way of living.
The best works from around the globe will be part of a curated international exhibition that aims to create a new Alphabet for the Future: a fresh architectural and design language to compose an unprecedented vocabulary of ideas for a more equitable way of living, one that is more aware, responsible, conscious, environmental, egalitarian, generous and human centric.
All Architecture Graduates of 2020 are invited to go to:
Matteocainer.com/curatorial/alphabet/2020
Contact: alphabet@matteocainer.com
#alphabetforthefuture #alphabet2020
Matteo Cainer is a practising architect, curator and educator. Based in London, he is Principal of Matteo Cainer Architecture, founder of the Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture in Lyon, France and Director of Architecture Whispers.
After receiving his master’s degree from the University of Architecture in Venice, Italy, he worked and collaborated with a number of celebrated international practices including Peter Eisenman in New York City, Coop Himmelb(l)au in Vienna, and Arata Isozaki Associati in Milan.
It was in London that he created/directed the Design Research Studio at Fletcher Priest Architects, and in June 2010 opened his own office.
Curatorially in 2004 he was Assistant Director to Kurt W. Forster for the 9th International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia – METAMORPH, and in 2006 was appointed curator of the London Architecture Biennale – CHANGE, with the exhibition: ‘The World in One City – A Sketch for London’. In 2011 he moved to Paris where he conceived and directed ‘Architecture Whispers’ a series of intimate multidisciplinary and cross-cultural conversations between emerging and consolidated visionary international architects and their colleagues in other disciplines. In 2018 he moved back to London where he currently works and practises and in April of the same year he was nominated curator of the 7th Edition of the Dark Side Club, a three evening forum for critical debate with prominent industry experts happening during the vernissage days of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale.
Matteo has always been active in academia: from visiting critic at the Bartlett School of Architecture, the AA and Westminster in London, to the Dessau Institute of Architecture in Germany and Cooper Union, Pratt and Penn in the United States. In 2009 he started teaching at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris as an Associate professor and in 2010 he conceived, created and directed the Pavillon Spéciale, an annual architectural series that gave international young emerging and experimental architects the opportunity to build with students a temporary pavilion in the heart of Paris, France. In 2013 he co-founded and co-directed with Odile Decq the Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture in Lyon, France and was Chair and professor until July 2015. He continues to be a regular guest critic and jury member in various universities worldwide.
The work of Matteo Cainer and his practice has won various awards and has been published in numerous books and international magazines; furthermore the work has been exhibited in various international exhibitions, and Matteo has also written and edited a number of books and articles in the field of architecture and design.
