Tag: Architecture

Technical Studies Lecture Series: “Experimenting with Architecture” McCloy + Muchemwa | Thursday, October 7 2021 at 18:00, Room M416, Marylebone Campus

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Thursday, 7th of October at 6pm

Where: Room M416, School of Architecture + Cities, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

The design and architecture studio of Steve McCloy and Bongani Muchemwa has its roots in Africa and is based in London. The studio’s work is an inventive exploration into design thinking and designs have included a bamboo bicycle, a reinvention of the Police ‘Tardis’, street furniture, modular housing and wearable architecture. In 2020 McCloy + Muchemwa were named in the Architects’ Journal 40 Under 40, and featured in Wallpaper* magazine’s survey of the next generation of 10 London practices.

Steve is a registered architect with experience across a variety of sectors from public installations and private homes to civic buildings, polar research stations, and sustainable urban developments. He is also published as a researcher / author and has contributed to numerous books and articles including ‘Once Upon A China’ by CJ Lim + Steve McCloy (2021). Steve has exhibited work at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, and was nominated for both the RIBA President’s Bronze and Silver Medals.

Bongani is a registered architect with significant experience at some of the UK’s most high profile architectural practices and he has won numerous awards for design excellence. His work with film and animation has been widely celebrated including at Magma Film Festival in Sicily. Bongani has exhibited work at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, and was nominated for the RIBA President’s Bronze Medal. Bongani is also a lecturer and studio tutor at the University of Westminster, a Practice Mentor at the Royal College of Art, and is a trustee of the Wakefield-based arts charity Beam.

For details contact: Will McLean

w.f.mclean@wmin.ac.uk

https://technicalstudies.tumblr.com/

LET’S TALK: Changing the Culture of Architecture to fit all | Thursday, October 7 from 18:00 to 19:30

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

ONLINE EVENT

On the 7th of October LET’S BUILD is organising their 7th event in the series LET’S TALK: Changing the Culture of Architecture to Fit All. Each event brings together a diverse group of construction professionals to share their experience.

We will be discussing the architecture and construction industry and how we could make the industry more inclusive with Changing the Culture of Architecture to Fit All. We want to re-think the construction industry and provide opportunities for professionals from all backgrounds.

Let’s Build is a platform for those who want to challenge and change the status quo.

Join the debate and help us improve the industry for the benefit of all.

LET’S BUILD

For more information about the event and to book tickets please click here.

Call for Papers: DMJournal – Architecture and Representation | Deadline: Monday, November 22, 2021

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

DMJournal–Architecture and Representation is a new publication dedicated to the exploration of practices, histories and material cultures of drawing in architecture and related fields. Initiated by Drawing Matter in collaboration with the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA), it builds upon the kind of wide-ranging inquiry into architecture’s graphic forms evident in the rich array of texts that has accumulated over recent years on the Drawing Matter website. This is a resource that now attracts some 15,000 readers each month, from a broad range of disciplines. DMJournal will extend this content by providing a complementary publishing platform that is peer-reviewed and able to host full-length articles. It will promote scholarship that is rigorous, engaging and supple, and that approaches drawing as an expansive and vital area of cultural production.

  1. About
  2. Call for Papers 2021/22
    Architecture and the Geological Imagination (Guest Editor: Kurt Forster)
    Drawing Instruments: Instrumental Drawings (Guest Editor: Paul Emmons)
  3. Submission Process
  4. Issues
  5. Editorial & Advisory Committees

London Festival of Architecture 2021 Film Screening: Aalto (Virpi Suutari 2020) + Prof Harry Charrington and Virpi Suutari in conversation | June 2, 2021 18:00-19:00

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

AALTO is a documentary film journey into the life and work of one of the greatest modern architects Alvar Aalto. The film shares the love story of Alvar and his architect wives Aino and Elissa Aalto. It takes the viewer on a cinematic tour to their creative processes and iconic buildings all over the world. We visit their buildings in Finland, a library in Russia, a student dormitory at MIT, an art collector’s private house near Paris, a pavilion in Venice – and many other unique places.

The film is available to watch 1-7 June. Register on Eventbrite to receive your free streaming link.

See the film trailer using event link.

Director Virpi Suutari and Professor Harry Charrington will discuss the film on 2 June 18-19.

Professor Harry Charrington, Head of School of Architecture + Cities, is also one of the main narrators and consultants in this newly released documentary film.

Tickets/Booking:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/aalto-virpi-suutari-2020-film-screening-tickets-150740666391

Design and Build Workshop at Kangerlussuaq, Greenland from 25th of July to 9th of August 2021 | Deadline for applications: May 25, 2021

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

Architecture students are encouraged to apply to design and build workshop in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland that will take place between 29th of July and 9th of August.

The workshop will be located in Kangerlussuaq where the students during a period of 14 days will construct one of the several installations / structures by recycling materials from the local dump site in Kangerlussuaq. The workshop and resulting project will through re-use have a focus on environment and climate challenges on a local and global scale. We will work together with 5 students Arctic DTU in Sisimiut, Greenland.

Tens students will be selected based on 1 page A4 long free form applications. Please send max 1MB email by 25th of May to: sami@ri-eg.com

The workshop will be facilitated by architect professor Sami Rental and architect Harald Seljesæter. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangerlussuaq

https://visitgreenland.com/

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1557

https://destinationarcticcircle.com/

http://www.sisimiut.museum.gl/Kangerlussuaq_Museum-2

Workshop facts:

Location and base will be Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.

How to get to Greenland: 

Flights from Copenhagen CPH to Kangerlussuaq SFJ

The team will live together in a research station building in Kangerlussuaq. Two people may have to share a room. 

The project will cover accommodation and food during workshop. Travels must be covered by participants. No participation fee. 

Deadline 25th of June to confirm if the project is possible due to Covid-19. Negative test requested at CPH before boarding the plane, and again at Greenland after 5 days.

Current regulations request quarantine (5 days) which will be the start of the workshop design phase. The team will form a cohort. 

The project will reserve tickets with negotiated prices for the flight between Copenhagen-Kangerlussuaq (Air Greenland) for the chosen participants & payment pater. 

The team will be 10 international students + 5 students from Greenland. Work together with volunteers and local people. 

One free day with social expedition / excursion.

Inussiarnersumik Inuulluaqqusillunga! / Best Wishes!

Project Team

Call for Abstracts: RAPS Radicality 2021 Conference | Deadline: Friday, April 30, 2021

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

RAPS Radicality 2021 Conference is pleased to invite extended abstract submissions for 30th April 2021. We invite submissions from architects, academics, artists, environmental scientists, engineers, activists, sociologists and visionaries amongst others to submit 300word abstracts in link below. The Conference will explore radical visions  of  architecture practice for sustainability through six themes: Architect as Activist; Green Dream; NOT building; Ecological Entanglements; Utopian Realism; Beyond Disruptive Events – Post Pandemic Practices (https://www.rapsresearch.com/services). We are excited to be joined by radical visionaries including Etienne Turpin (ANEXACT), Malene Natascha Ratcliffe (CEO, SUPERFLEX) and Maarten Gielen (ROTOR) in the keynote and debate panel sessions in Sept 2021. The keynote sessions will be reflecting upon human and non-human multi spatial modalities and radical environmental approaches to design as well as modes of cooperative design practice for a radical organisation of the material ‘designed’ and not only ‘built’ environment.

Radical Architecture Practice for Sustainability

For more information please go here.

FAME: Exposing the Barriers in Architecture | Friday, December 4, 18:00-19:30 GMT [Online event hosted by Architecture Foundation via Zoom]

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Friday, 4th of December, 6pm-7.30pm

Eventbrite link

FAME will be hosting their first event to expose the barriers female architects of minority ethnic face in the architecture industry today

About this Event

FAME: Female Architects of Minority Ethnic: founded by Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows and Tahin Khan.

FAME Collective is a research-based network founded to support women of diverse backgrounds and ethnicities in architecture and the built environment. Their aim is to raise awareness of the barriers, inequality and lack of diversity in architecture and to demand change that responds to our collective challenges. This event is part of a series of events which will be documented and shared with those in power to change and address the inequality that exists in architecture.

Join us for the launch of FAME’s first symposium ‘EXPOSING THE BARRIERS IN ARCHITECTURE’ hosted by Architecture Foundation via Zoom, and presented by Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows. Our distinguished keynote speaker Sumita Singha (recent RIBA Presidential candidate). Our panel of speakers include Annette Fisher (from Let’s BUild), Hilary Satchwell (from Tibbalds and Part W), Femi Oresanya (from HOK and the Chair of the RIBA Architects for Change Expert Advisory Group) and Anna Liu (Director of Tonkin Liu, won the 2018 Stephen Lawrence Prize for Old Shed New House).

This is a participatory event to explore the impact of racism, injustice and inequality contributing to the barriers in architecture. We want to hear about the lived experiences of practitioners, academics and students from BAME backgrounds, to unpack the grievances.

FAME is responding to an urgent need for understanding how race and gender affects established practitioners, young scholars and students, from diverse backgrounds, knowledge and practices by engaging in conversations about the barriers in architecture and the built environment. Our aim is to collectively respond and to demand change and the much-needed support to overcome barriers of racial and gender inequality both in academia and in practices. Our Q + A and participatory sessions will provide an opportunity for participants to share experiences of racial and gender inequality in architecture and the built environment.

This event is being hosted by the Architecture Foundation via Zoom.

The details for all participants will be announced soon.

Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows’ article for RIBAJ: “Practical steps towards real inclusion”

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

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.

Technical Studies Lecture Series: “The Shape of Green” Mick Pearce, Thursday, October 1, 18:00 [online via BB]

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

Thursday, 1st of October at 6.00pm

Event link: https://eu.bbcollab.com/collab/ui/session/guest/2415664a77cb470bb266d845cf4bcb76 

Michael Pearce is a graduate of the AA and was a student of the socio-technology gurus Reyner Banham and Cedric Price. Pearce was responsible for the design and supervision of the award-winning Eastgate Centre in Harare and the CH2 (Council House 2) Municipal offices in Melbourne Australia. The metaphor for Eastgate was the termitary, the metaphor for CH2 is the tree. Pearce believes that the architecture and its visual expression should respond to the natural, socio-cultural and economic environment of its location in the same way that an ecosystem in nature is embedded in its site. 

Pearce has been working in Zimbabwe and Zambia for 33 years. His experience covers a wide range from building in remote parts of Central Africa to converting buildings in north east England and large-scale city developments in Harare, Zimbabwe. Committed to appropriate and responsive architecture, Michael Pearce has specialised in the development of buildings which have low maintenance, low capital and running costs and renewable energy systems of environmental control. His most recent work involves developing passive control systems in small-scale single storey buildings as well as large-scale commercial multi-storey buildings using building methods which rely even less on imported materials, technologies or human resources. He has been closely involved in the development of rammed earth construction for low cost housing in remote locations in Zimbabwe where transport and energy are the largest costs in producing buildings.  

Two Worlds Design Instagram Live Event: Architecture & Employment Post-COVID-19, Saturday, June 6 at 2pm

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Saturday, June 6, 2pm

Where: Instagram Live @twoworlds.design

This Saturday, 6th of June at 2pm Hamza Shaikh, DS23 MArch student and the creator of a popular podcast series Two Worlds Design will be joined by three inspiring professionals in the field of architecture to discuss the difficult questions around employment in post-COVID-19 world. 

Hamza says:

Many students, myself included, are anxious and confused about the job landscape in architecture. There are many questions to be asked, but we don’t know whom to ask and when to ask. Well, the time to ask is now, and some of the people to ask are joining me this Saturday for this one-off event, LIVE on Instagram. But we need YOU to engage for this to work. Our last event was very successful, and this time we want to hear your voices. If you have any questions, views or experiences on this topic, PLEASE send me a message. We are looking for 3 people to join this event. Otherwise, send your general questions about what you would like to be addressed. See you there! 

The event will end with the announcements from Arthur Mamou-Mani and a collective Muslim Women in Architecture, so make sure you tune in!!!