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.
When: Monday, 6th of February, 13:00-14:00 (GMT)
Where: M321, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS
The next Architecture and Cities Research Seminar will take place on the 6th of February, 2023, 13.00 – 14.00 as an in-person presentation in M321 (note the change of venue from previous seminars). It will be given by Elias Pajeres, a researcher currently visiting the EX-TRA project.
All staff and students are welcome to attend.
The University of Westminster School of Architecture and Cities (UoW), in collaboration with the Zaha Hadid Foundation (ZHF) welcome applications for an interdisciplinary PhD studentship funded by Technē under its Doctoral Training Partnership Scheme, to begin in September 2023. Applicants will be shortlisted via the UoW online application and interview arrangements and be subject to approval via the subsequent Technē online application process.
Zaha Hadid was the first woman and Arabic architect to win architecture’s Pritzker Prize (26th Laureate), yet there are few academic studies of her ground-breaking career as an international pioneer in the continuation of Modernism and the emergence of ‘parametric’ design. This first PhD project with the newly formed ZHF will combine reinterpretations of her ethnic and gendered context with detailed exploration of her seminal role in reshaping architecture through digital production. The ensuing work will contribute to the development of a major research foundation.
This PhD may span or link three key areas. The work will chart and analyse the translation of her world-famous speculative paintings through emerging digital technologies to inform major innovations in architectural practice; will test her often-vehement criticisms of professional barriers to gender, especially women and those from global minority backgrounds; and will combine these to offer new histories and interpretations of her work. Moreover, the outcomes will test, in practice at the ZHF, how the capturing of digital and process-driven design can shape the construction of architectural archives.
On Jobs.ac.uk:
On the UoW website:
On Find a PhD:
Featured image: Zaha Hadid with Zaha Hadid Architects, London 2066, Vogue Magazine (UK), 1991 © Zaha Hadid Foundation
On Monday, December 6, Professor Kester Rattenbury received the biannual 2022 RIBA Annie Spink Award at the RIBA President’s Medals Awards ceremony.
“The prestigious biennial prize is awarded to an individual who has made a significant contribution to the advancement of architectural education, in a school of architecture anywhere in the world that offers courses validated by the RIBA.
Rattenbury is an architectural teacher, critic, writer and academic, who has taught design studio for 30 years: first at the University of Greenwich; then since 2000 at the University of Westminster in London. Here she ran the experimental studio DS15 with Sean Griffiths and also devised and spearheaded the research group EXP (Experimental Practice) with its leading projects the Supercrit series and the Archigram Archival Project – which was rated ‘Outstanding’ by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She was made FRIBA in 2005 and Professor at Westminster in 2014. ”
RIBA
Read more here.
Featured image: Kester Rattenbury by Clare Banstead (source: RIBA website)
The 2022 Sustainability Workshop organised by Norman Foster Foundation took place in Madrid, Spain, between 10th and 14th of October.
Georgios spoke about his experience to University of Westminster’s News:
“The Workshop aimed to explore the concept of sustainability at the intersection of natural and artificial. During the week-long programme, we aimed to generate projects and prototypes that demonstrated the transformative potential of combining different types of intelligence, namely ecological, human, and technological.”
To read more, please go here.
When: Thursday, 8th of December, 6pm (GMT)
Where: M416, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS + Online (see tumblr page below for link)
Michael Jones is a deputy head of studio at Foster + Partners. Alongside Senior Executive Partner Stefan Behling, he oversees almost 100 architects working on a wide range of international projects. He was awarded a bachelor degree in architecture in 1986 and joined the practice in the same year as an architectural assistant. In 1988, he continued his studies at the Royal College of Art, gaining his master’s degree in architecture in 1990. He subsequently returned to Foster + Partners, where he qualified as an architect in 1994.
He initially worked on a number of education buildings, starting with the Deuxième Lycée de Fréjus in the South of France, followed by the Law Faculty for the University of Cambridge. Thereafter, he focused on working with historic and listed buildings, initially as the project architect of the new International Rail Terminal for London at St Pancras Station, then as project director on the detail design and procurement for the Great Court at the British Museum. In 2000, he began work on the large-scale masterplan and expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. During this time, he was leading the design of the UK Supreme Court in Westminster, the new Winspear Opera House in Dallas and a major a new Faculty Building for Imperial College London.
Most recently he has been responsible for the new European headquarters for Bloomberg in the City of London and the ongoing renovation and expansion of the Imperial War Museum in London, the first phase of which was completed to coincide with the centenary of the First World War in 2014.
https://technicalstudies.tumblr.com/
For details contact: Will McLean – w.f.mclean@wmin.ac.uk
When: Friday, 25th of November at 10:45am
Where: M416 + MG28, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS
The Association for Tourism in Higher Education’s (ATHE) seminar Resilience, Recovery, and Rejuvenation will take place on Friday, 25th of November from 10.45am to 3pm. The morning session will be held in M416, and the afternoon session in MG28.
This timely event is being organised by Ilaria Pappalepodore.
You can book a place using this link: www.athe.org.uk/booking/
All welcome!
When: Monday, 31st of October, 13:00-14:00 (GMT)
Where: M416, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS + Online
The next Architecture + Cities Research Seminar will be by Enrica Papa, Emilia Smeds and Tom Cohen, on their work within the EXTRA project, Experimenting with City Streets to Transform Urban Mobility. It will be a hybrid event in M416, with the virtual link here.
All staff and students are welcome to attend.
When: Friday, 7th of October at 6.30pm
Where: Cavendish Campus, University of Westminster, 115 New Cavendish St, London W1B 2HW
To book tickets please go here.
Please join us for an event organised jointly with Docomomo UK:
We are celebrating the University’s finest building: 115 New Cavendish Street, and the work of its architects Lyons, Israel, Ellis.
John Ellis, architect and son of the partner Tom Ellis, will bein conversation with Elain Harwood and John Miller.
Lyons, Israel, Ellis, ‘the most important form of architects you never heard of’, were a remarkable firm and employers / mentors of Neave Brown, Alan Colquhoun, Eldred Evans, James Gowan, John Gray, Richard MacCormac, Rick Mather, John Miller, and James Stirling.
When: Tuesday, 25th of October at 6pm (BST)
Where: Robin Evans Room, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS + Online
Born in 1947 in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, Andrew Holmes moved to London in 1966, and attended the Architectural Association.
He is best known for a series of 150 photo realistic colour pencil drawings exploring the apparently anonymous mobile infrastructure of cities. In addition his work encompasses printmaking, photography, film, and design.
The work in all its forms has been exhibited, and published widely for fifty-five years. Holmes is Professor Emeritus of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University, Guest Professor at the Technische Universitaat, Berlin, and a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute. He lives and works in London.
Andrew’s personal view is not the conventional idea of imagination. He will be talking about his experience of drawing.
During his working life the digital revolution has enabled a transformation. The craft of pencil and ink on paper has been joined by the skill of drawing with light. Andrew is fascinated by the ways in which an idea in the mind can be represented to the outside world.
The talk comprises an intense collection of images and visual effects. It offers observations about the unique quality of handicraft and the elements of three traditions:
Art is evidence, and an ability to select significant objects and experiences.
Art is the residue of engaging the existing systems with particular mechanical techniques and processes.
Art provides the possibility of fabricating new versions of reality.
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.
This year’s lecture will take place in the Robin Evans Room in hybrid format, with a limited number of places available for in-person attendance by students, staff and externals – in line with capacity for the room (100). Additionally, there is capacity for up to 500 attending remotely via Zoom. You must register if you plan to attend.
The in-person iteration will be followed by a short drinks reception in the Robin Evans Room, closing at approximately 21:00.
Congratulations to Reece Murray from DS3.4 BA (Hons) Architecture and Rebecca Kelly from DS11 MArch on being nominated for this year’s AJ Student Prize.
To read more about their projects visit here.
