Tag: Architecture

PhD Scholarships in Architecture at the School of Architecture Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University_Deadline: 15th July 2018

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

Newcastle University is delighted to announce two new PhD scholarships in Architecture at their School of Architecture Planning and Landscape, both open to creative practice and written thesis routes in any area of architectural research, with deadlines of 15th July for applications.

These are great opportunities for outstanding candidates to join their flourishing PGR and research community:

  1. The arq PhD Scholarship in Architecture  includes 1.5 days per week editorial work supporting the Cambridge University Press journal arq: Architectural Research Quarterly and is £15,000 per year for four years.
  2. The Forshaw PhD Scholarship in Architecture will be the inaugural appointment for a new endowed annual PhD scholarship in the school at £15,000 per year for three years. In accordance with the terms of the Forshaw endowment, the scholarship is open to women applicants only.

 

Featured image from University of Newcastle web-site.

CRL Scholarship Award for First Year Undergraduate Students_Deadline 30th October 2018

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

1) Who is eligible for this scholarship?

The CRL scholarship is open to:

  • First-year undergraduates only
  • Students who have a confirmed place at a recognised UK academic institution for a degree in one of the following disciplines: engineering, construction, architecture
  • Home, EU and International students in the UK only

2) How will your application be assessed?

The CRL Scholarship rewards academic performance and applicants must display evidence of academic excellence and innovation.This will be demonstrated by:

  • Academic endorsements by two personal referees
  • Submission of an essay of no more than 1,000 words entitled ‘The Future Of The Construction Industry’

3) How will the awards be allocated?

  • Applicants will be judged by our internal panel and the 10 strongest entrants will be selected to receive the £1,000 cash prize.
  • Successful applicants will be notified by 1st December 2018.
  • All scholarship awards will be presented at a ceremony hosted by CRL at a date and venue to be confirmed closer to the time.

For more info and to apply please go to: https://c-r-l.com/about-us/scholarship/

Expanded Territories Reading Group: “Architecture in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Design, Deep Time, Science and Philosophy”_Wednesday 6th June, 17:30, M330

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

The second Expanded Territories reading group will meet in M330 on Wednesday 06 June at 17.30.

Christina Geros will introduce:

Architecture in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Design, Deep Time, Science and Philosophy, edited by Etienne Turpin.

The book is available for download or purchase here:

http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/architecture-in-the-anthropocene/

Discussion will be accompanied by wine and nibbles.

All are welcome.

SAHGB: Annual Essay Prizes in Architectural History – Deadline 31st May

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain

ANNUAL ESSAY PRIZES IN ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY

Submissions due by 31 May 2018

The Society of Architectural Historians Great Britain (SAHGB) is accepting submissions for two of its internationally-renowned essay prizes. These awards are the most prestigious in the country for the discipline of architectural history. They are open to all historians of the built environment, and you do not need to be a member to participate. Nominations are normally accepted from members, but unsolicited nominations will be considered on merit.

We particularly encourage submissions from:

  • Masters and doctoral students in relevant disciplines
  • Heritage professionals
  • Practising architects, in particular those working with historic environments
  • Full-time academics at all career stages in relevant disciplines

The society welcomes submissions of work relating to the history of the built environment from all disciplines, including but by no means limited to:

  • History
  • Geography
  • Architecture
  • Art History

On as diverse a range of themes as possible, including:

  • Histories of design
  • Histories of planning
  • Histories of construction
  • Histories of buildings in use
  • Histories of interiors and interior design
  • Histories of practice and professionalism

We are looking for work that it is innovative, ambitious and rigorous in the history of the built environment. Previous winners of our awards and prizes have gone on to have esteemed careers in architectural history and heritage.

Please consider submitting work and encourage students, colleagues and friends to do so too. Further information and methods of submission can be found on our website.

James Morris Essay Prize for Colonial and Post-Colonial Architecture

Submission Deadline – 31st May

For who?

Graduate Students, Early Career Researchers, Academics, Heritage Professionals, Architects

For what?

Unpublished research up to 10,000 words

Prize £400, consideration for publication in Architectural History

The James Morris Essay Prize is named after James Morris (1878-1964), a British-born and -educated architect who worked in South Africa from 1902, including a period spent in the office of Sir Herbert Baker. It was generously endowed by his grandson, Dr Simon Morris. It is awarded to the best essay received on British Colonial and Post-Colonial Architecture. The prize is presented at the Society’s annual lecture.

Hawksmoor Essay Medal

Submission Deadline – 31st May

For who?

Graduate Students, Early Career Researchers, Heritage Professionals

For what?

Unpublished research up to 10,000 words

Prize £400, Medal, and consideration for publication in Architectural History

To encourage new architectural historians, the Society’s Essay Medal (popularly known as ‘the Hawksmoor’) is awarded annually to the author of the best essay submitted in competition. Early career and unpublished researchers are particularly encouraged to submit new work for the competition. As a permanent reminder of the winner’s achievement, a bronze medal featuring a relief portrait of Nicholas Hawksmoor based on the bust of the architect by John Cheere is awarded and inscribed with the winner’s name and date. This is presented at the Society’s Annual Lecture.

Constructionarium, CITB HQ Norfolk, 20th-25th May 2018

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

The Faculty has run the Constructionarium for Construction students for the past 10 years – with great success.

The Constructionarium offers Year 2+ students a week at the CITB HQ in Norfolk building scale models of various structures, and is a fantastic opportunity to gain hands on experience of managing and constructing a real construction project, and will allow you to demonstrate valuable site experience on your CV.

Roles undertaken by the students include project management and planning, setting out, carpentry, steelwork and laying concrete.

This year the Constructionarium will be open to Architecture students!

The Constructionarium will run from Sunday 20 – Friday 25 May.

The cost will be capped at £75 per student and for this you will get transport, accommodation, and 3 meals a day.

Here’s a link to a couple of the time lapse videos of previous trips:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao_M175H–s&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fcsWYZNomo&feature=youtu.be

 

This year we will be constructing scale models of Ove Arup’s Brewery Wharf Bridge and Ravenspurn Oil Platform.

We now have the link available for you to make your £75 deposit which will secure your place and is all the financial contribution we require from yourselves.

We will have a pre-trip preparation day here at the University beforehand, and this is provisionally scheduled for Wednesday 16th May.

Should you wish to attend the field trip or have any questions, please email Sean Flynn at s.flynn@westminster.ac.uk with your full name and student number and use the link below to make your payment: https://store.westminster.ac.uk/product-catalogue/faculty-of-architecture-and-the-built-enviroment/field-trips/constructionarium-field-trip

Call for Papers: International Journal of Islamic Architecture, Special Issue: “Field as Archive / Archive as Field”, Deadline 30th July 2018

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

This special issue of IJIA focuses on the experience of carrying out archival work or fieldwork in architectural research, including research-led practice. How might this experience, with all its contingencies and errancies, be made into the very stuff of the architectural histories, theories, criticisms and/or practices resulting from it?

This question is rendered all the timelier due to recent and ongoing developments across the globe, not least in the geographies relevant to IJIA’s remit. The fallout from the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ has escalated social, political, and economic crises and, in certain cases like Libya and Syria, has taken an overtly violent turn. Major countries with a predominantly Muslim population, such as Turkey, Egypt and Indonesia, have witnessed restrictions on civil liberties. Moreover, the word ‘Islam’ has become embroiled in various restrictive measures introduced in countries whose successive administrations have otherwise laid claim to being bastions of democracy and freedom, such as emergency rule in France and travel bans in the US.

Others with significant Muslim populations, such as India and Russia, have seen nationalist and/or populist surges, often with significant implications for their minorities. Such developments have engendered numerous issues of a markedly architectural and urban character, including migration, refuge, and warfare, protest and surveillance, as well as heightening the risk of contingencies and errancies affecting archival work and fieldwork.

Whereas this risk and its materializations are typically considered unfortunate predicaments and written out of research outputs, how might a focus on architecture at this juncture help write them back into history, theory, criticism, and practice? What might this mean for the ways in which architectural research is conceived and carried out under seemingly ‘ordinary’ circumstances – those that appear free from the risk of contingencies and errancies affecting archival work and field work?

Deadline for submissions: 30th July 2018

For more information: https://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=204/view,page=2/

LATE Conversations #2, RURAL[scapes], Monday 12th March, 18:00-20:00, Robin Evans Room M416

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

LATE Conversations #2

Landscape, Architecture and Tourism Explorations

When: Monday 12 March 2018, 6-8pm

Where: Robin Evans Room [M416], Faculty of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

RURAL[scapes]

Never mind the countryside

[Ben Stringer]

In the shadows of urbanisation the countryside is changing. Familiar tropes of tradition, nostalgia and certitude seem strangely out of place in a highly contested setting of increasing uncertainty and instability. How can artists and architects engage with rural anxiety and complexity?

The black field: elements and strata at Manston airport

[Corinna Dean]

Through my research vehicle The Archive for Rural Contemporary Architecture [ARCA] I recorded the now decommissioned Kent International Airport, specifically the 2749m runway built during the Second World War; too costly to dig up, sitting on a substrate of a depth of 3 to 5 metres. As proposals for its future are debated, the question arises as to how the nature of the materiality of the site and a consideration for its place in a geological time span, might influence a proposal for its future use?

On the rural and its connections

[Giulio Verdini]

Harmonious territorial development and urban-rural linkages have attracted increased policy attention in recent years in the attempt to overcome the predominant discourse of the urban-rural divide. Urban-rural linkages refer to complementary and synergetic functions and flows of people, natural resources, capital, goods, employment, ecosystem services, information and technology between rural, peri-urban and urban areas. Therefore, territorial or urban-rural partnerships are increasingly regarded as a desirable policy action respectful of the particular identities of different territorial components. Cases of rural towns in Asia, Latin America and Europe, and their sustainable regional or international connections, will be presented.

Experiencing the rural

[Nancy Stevenson]

This presentation will consider embodied and emotional journeys through rural areas, drawn from research into walkers’ experiences of the South Downs Way. By examining the bodily sensations and emotional states experienced by walkers, I identify feelings that are innate and those that are mediated by the rural environment. An urban-rural dichotomy is evident in the literature and is supported by the notion that in the countryside, the walking body is free from the restrictions, regulations and distractions of city. However, in the action-space of the walk a mixture of social interaction and opportunity for introspection disconnects walkers from their immediate environment and connects them to other places and other times.

Moderation

[Helen Farrell]

Format

18:00 – 19:00 introduction of session and speakers + interventions [10m each speaker]

19:00 – 19:30 extended conversation between guests and audience

19:30 – 20:00 drinks

People

Ben Stringer teaches design studio and history and theory at the University of Westminster, London. He was one of the principal organisers of the Re-Imagining Rurality conference and exhibition held at Westminster in 2015. He recently guest edited a ‘Villages and Globalisation’ issue of the journal Architecture and Culture. He also edited the book Rurality Re-imagined, to be published later this year. He is also a trustee of Oxford City Farm.

Corinna Dean is a Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Westminster. She is an urbanist and curator who looks at a semiotic reading of the urbanscape, and is driven by an interest in how the urban is communicated, experienced and lived out across cultures, most recently explored on a field study trip of Douala, Cameroon with a French agency and to Kochi, India, to collaborate with the Kochi-Muziri Art Biennale team. She holds a PhD from the LSE Cities Programme which was a collaborative doctoral award with Tate Modern and explored narratives of cultural regeneration. Most recently she launched ARCA, the Archive for Rural Contemporary Architecture, which is an open source archive to encourage participation from the bottom up, as well as re-engaging cold war structures and other architectural typologies in a rural context. She is engaged in devising cultural projects to bring these sites into the public consciousness through temporary activities such as workshops and creative interpretations.

Giulio Verdini is a Senior Lecturer in Planning at the University of Westminster and the Course Leader of BA Designing Cities. He has published on urban-rural linkages, urban governance, local development and community involvement, particularly in the context of China. He wrote ‘Urban China’s Rural Fringe’ (Routledge, 2016) and he was one of the lead contributors of the UNESCO Global Report ‘Culture for Sustainable Urban Development’ (2016). He is currently the editor of the newly established Routledge Book Series ‘Planning, Heritage and Sustainability.

Nancy Stevenson is the International Director for fABE. She originally qualified and worked as an urban planner and now teaches on the tourism and events programmes. Her research reflects an interest in small scale and embodied activities, experiences and interactions within the built and natural environment.

Helen Farrell leads the undergraduate tourism courses and is a senior lecturer in tourism. Her research interests are in rural recreation, landscape and sustainability. She helps edit the journal ‘Tourism Planning and Development’ and has publications on topics such as the embodied experiences of walking, the benefits of green exercise and rural tourism entrepreneurship. Current research with Nancy Stevenson on the South Downs Way has one article in press with another underway at present.

LATE Conversations is a series of events exploring the interactions between Landscape, Architecture and Tourism. It aims to engage an interdisciplinary conversation across the departments of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment and foster dialogue between academics/professionals and students from different disciplines engaged with the Landscape.

Organisation: Westminster Architecture Society and Westminster Tourism Society.

Coordination: Duarte Santo and Helen Farrell

LATE conversations is a joint event of the Department of Architecture and the Department of Planning and Transport. Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, University of Westminster.

#LATEconversations

#architectureandbuiltenvironment

#universityofwestminster

#ruralscapes

Next in series: LATE conversation #3 GLOBAL[scapes] 26.03.2018

The MArch Education Symposium 2018_Friday 16th March, 10:00-17:45, Robin Evans Room M416

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

VALUE

Inherently, the discipline of architecture seeks to respond to changing demands and societal concerns. Historically, the need to respond has typically been self-declared.

Even in times of disciplinary crisis, architecture has self-confidently declared the problem and prescribed the solution. Recent decades however, have seen an erosion of confidence, turning the discipline into one which could be seen to suffer, simultaneously, from external attack and internal doubt. Key shifts and turns within the construction industry, architectural discourse, and higher education have converged to set forth a trajectory that will be – for better or worse – transformative.

With the potential to either entrench or subvert the marginalisation of the architect, this trajectory will add fuel to the now familiar debate on the role and value of the architect. Given its importance in this debate, how should architectural education respond? How accurately can we value the range and possible applications of an architect’s skills? How can we articulate and constitute alternative roles for architects? How can design, as an architect’s core skill, be understood and practiced in a manner which deepens its value?

This inaugural MArch Education Symposium brings MArch staff, students, and invited friends together to explore the nebulous (yet contested) concept of value.

The discussions will inform evolving ideas on how the MArch might respond to the questions above.

LATE Conversations #1 URBAN[scapes], Monday 5th March, 18:00-20:00, Robin Evans Room M416

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

LATE Conversations #1

Landscape, Architecture and Tourism Explorations

When: Monday 05 March 2018, 6-8pm

Where: Robin Evans Room [M416], Faculty of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

URBAN[scapes]

Staging the city: recreating the urban as eventscape

[Andrew Smith]
Like other theatrical metaphors, the idea of the ‘city as stage’ is commonly cited within urban and tourism studies. However, this interpretation treats events and the context in which they happen as separate entities when they are better understood as intertwined. This presentation outlines the contemporary use of public spaces for (planned) events and explores the idea of urban eventscapes – assemblages of people, buildings and event structures. It is easy to dismiss these as temporary phenomena, but there is evidence that festivals, sports events and exhibitions can have lasting effects on urban spaces, and that the built environment is being adapted to accommodate them.

Skywalking in the city

[Davide Deriu]
Ever since the advent of high-rise architecture, the modern city has been a distinct locus of vertiginous experience. Whilst the correlation between vertigo and tall buildings might at first appear to be an obvious one, it is in fact a variable function of ever-evolving techniques and materials, and depends on the psychosocial conditions that underlie the experience of space at a given place and time. The presentation explores the ambivalent concept of vertigo and its significance for contemporary architecture through concepts of transparency, experience, and kinaesthesia. Focusing on the ongoing trend for elevated glass platforms, it proposes that these design features constitute a kind of sixth façade that characterises the emergence of an ‘architecture of vertigo’.

City in flux: mobilities and places in station areas

[Enrica Papa]
Using an approach that considers station areas both as places and as nodes in the transport network, the talk addresses the role of station areas in Greater London, with the aim of supporting long-term integrated land-use and transport strategies at the regional scale. In fact, ‘Transit Oriented Development’ has also been widely advocated and applied in London; however, so far no study has systematically developed a TOD typology in the London context. This paper fills this gap. The main innovation of this application of the node-place is that it is applied in the day hours and the night hours. Using GIS, the paper analyses network connectivity (‘node values’) and geographically detailed data on amenity levels, job and employment densities (‘place values’), revealing opportunities for (i) land-use densification within catchment areas or (ii) increased network connectivity of the stations supporting the 24 hour London economy.

Urban architectural representation of post-conflict destination branding

[Maja Jovic]
For this talk, Maja is looking at the concept of ‘urban’ in architecture and national identity, and its relation to tourism in post-conflict countries. Today, these countries are transitional economies that brand themselves as touristic destinations in order to find a unique position on the world map. Maja is questioning the role of architecture in shaping the destination identity – in particular the dialogue between urban and rural. Political and cultural transformations have a spatial dimension and Maja tries to understand the way national identities are reshaped, reproduced and differentiated from one another through architectural analysis. The findings are illustrated with the post-conflict regions of South East Europe, their creation of national stories on one side and Europeanism on the other. The dialogue between modernisation and the traditional resulted in a change of represented destination identity and a shift of attitude towards traditional and modern age architecture.

Moderation

[Victoria Watson]

People

Andrew Smith is a Reader in Tourism and Events and co-leads the Tourism and Events Research Group. His research focuses on city events and urban tourism and he works in and between the fields of urban studies and tourism/event studies. His work has been published in a variety of journals including Urban Studies, ARQ, European Planning Studies and Annals of Tourism Research and he has written two books: Events and Urban Regeneration: The Strategic Use of Events to Revitalise Cities (Routledge, 2012) and Events in the City: Using Public Spaces as Event Venues (Routledge, 2016). His current work focuses on the contested use of London’s parks as venues for large scale events; and the significance of urban light festivals .

Davide Deriu is a Reader and Director of Architectural Research at the University of Westminster. He holds a PhD from UCL and was awarded grants from the AHRC, Yale University, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), where he curated the exhibition Modernism in Miniature. His main research interests lie at the intersection between spatial and visual cultures, and he has published on a wide range of subjects – from underground space to aerial photography. Recently, Davide was a Mellon Fellow on the CCA research program Architecture and/for Photography, and Rowe Lecturer at RIBA. He leads the interdisciplinary project Vertigo in the City, which received seed funding from the Wellcome Trust.

Enrica Papa is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Planning and Transport of the University of Westminster, joined the ETC Board in November 2017. She is the Course leader of the MSc in Transport Planning and Management and leads the transport group of the AESOP (European Association of Schools of Planning). Enrica’s research is positioned at the intersection of urban, transport and economic geography. She has published extensively on geography of mobility, planning for sustainable accessibility, transitions to low-carbon and low-energy living and societies. Within the AET Board, she will be responsible for the AET Marketing and Recruitment activities and will coordinate the AET Ambassadors network.

Maja Jovic’s interests in the city, nation and destination branding, and in image management and national identity, lead her to question how it shapes the built environment and is shaped by a conflict and its residue. She focuses on the power of brand management, how fluctuations in national stories reflect on the built environment and the intersection of tourism and architecture in creating a destination brand. Her doctoral thesis, ‘Branding Post-Conflict Cities and Nations’ explored how branding helps recreate an image of a post-conflict city or nation. Maja took an interdisciplinary approach to identify the relations between the effect of national image and nationalism to brands, power, the built environment and the image as a destination. Maja teaches across departments to undergraduate and postgraduate students – Tourism, Architecture, Architectural Technology, Planning, and Property and Construction.

Victoria Watson is a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Westminster, a partner in Doctor Watson Architects (DWA) and a visiting tutor to the MA Architecture degree at the Royal College of Art. She has contributed articles about Mies van der Rohe to the Journal of Architecture and to the Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society. She has written about colour theory for a variety of journals and magazines. In 2010 she won a Rome scholarship and in 2012 her book, Utopian Adventure: the Corviale Void was published. Her architectonic models, derived from the study of colour in Miesian architecture, have been exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. She is currently writing a book about the cultural economics of architecture.

LATE Conversations is a series of events exploring the interactions between Landscape, Architecture and Tourism. It aims to engage an interdisciplinary conversation across the departments of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment and foster dialogue between academics,/professionals and students from different disciplines engaged with the Landscape.

Format

18:00 – 19:00 introduction of session and speakers + interventions [10m each speaker]
19:00 – 19:30 extended conversation between guests and audience
19:30 – 20:00 drinks

Organisation: Westminster Architecture Society and Westminster Tourism Society.

Coordination: Duarte Santo and Helen Farrell

LATE conversations is a joint event of the Department of Architecture and the Department of Planning and Transport. Faculty of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Westminster.

#LATEconversations
#architectureandbuiltenvironment
#universityofwestminster
#urbanscapes

“The Social (Re)Production of Architecture” Book Launch – Thursday 1st March, 6.30pm, Central St Martins

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

An evening symposium celebrating the launch of The Social (Re)Production of Architecture co-edited by Doina Petrescu and Kim Trogal will take place on Thursday, 1st March.

MArch DS22 studio leaders and tutors Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari will present their contribution to the book followed by discussion.

When: 1st March 2018,  6.30pm

Where: LVMH Lecture Theatre, Central St Martins, Granary Building, 1 Granary Sq, London N1C 4AA

RSVP: The event is free no RSVP is needed, however seats can be reserved via Eventbrite, doors open at 6.15PM

Speakers include:

  • Doina Petrescu & Kim Trogal (Editors) – Introduction to The Social (Re)Production of Architecture;
  • Kathrin Böhm & Michale Smythe – Phytology National Park: strategies to keep public spaces complex;
  • Helge Moohshammer & Peter Mortenbock – Tent Cities, peoples kitchens, free universities: The global villages of occupation movements;
  • Yara Sharif & Nasser Golzari – Cultivating spatial possibilities in Palestine: searching for sub/urban bridges in Beit Iksa, Jerusalem;
  • Rory Hyde – Ways to be public

The Social (Re)Production of Architecture brings the debates of the ‘right to the city’ into today’s context of ecological, economic and social crises. Building on the 1970s’ discussions about the ‘production of space’, which French sociologist Henri Lefebvre considered a civic right, the authors question who has the right to make space, and explore the kinds of relations that are produced in the process. In the emerging post-capitalist era, this book addresses urgent social and ecological imperatives for change and opens up questions around architecture’s engagement with new forms of organisation and practice. The book asks what (new) kinds of ‘social’ can architecture (re)produce, and what kinds of politics, values and actions are needed.

The symposium will be followed by drinks.