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: Tuesday, 8th of February at 6pm GMT
Where: Online
Eventbrite booking here.
Join us online at the School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster and Barnabas Calder who will introduce his important new book Architecture: From prehistory to climate emergency, which provides the first history of architecture with the climate emergency as the central focus.
The book is reviewed in The Guardian here.
Co-convenors: Maja Jovic and Kate Jordan
The AHRA Research Student Symposium 2022 “Voices in Architecture” considers voices in architectural research, posing the critical questions: who speaks and for whom? How do we give voice without assuming authority? How do we listen without judgment? How do we adjust the volume of our own voices?
A key objective of the symposium will be to connect architectural research with wider political concerns around democracy, protest and populism and we are particularly attentive to processes of public engagement and empowerment, social stratification and elitism. The symposium also seeks to investigate diverse modes of production and their social worlds and is interested in submissions that explore vernacular traditions, informal settlements, transient and temporary architectures. The organisers invite contributions that consider human-centred research methodologies both within and beyond the discrete boundaries of architecture, welcoming submissions from disciplines including literary theory, cultural studies, art history, anthropology, geography and planning. In line with this, we welcome paper presentations, as well as non-standard proposals (film, performance, photography, etc.). The research methods explored will include (but not be limited to) oral histories and interviews; ethnography; participative and interactive practices; social media and digital technologies, use of archives and material culture. We will explore the practical and ethical boundaries of such research, giving consideration to questions of privacy and to the politics of identity. We are interested in modes of dialogue: can we find ways of speaking ‘with’ as suggested by Ariella Azoulay in her recent work? Research that offers a platform to voices of otherness is particularly encouraged – the symposium is committed to the objectives of decolonisation in architectural history, theory and praxis, foregrounding narratives of gender, sexuality, race and non-conformity.
The keynote lectures will be delivered by Professor Christine Wall (University of Westminster) and Alexandre Apsan Frediani (International Institute for Environment and Development). To further provide the early career researchers with an insight into ways of ‘using’ their research, besides paper presentations and discussions, the symposium will offer three sets of activities that participants can choose from. These activities will each include a visit to a site, followed by a workshop:
All activities will be offered in a blended form and include physical visits with digital counterparts.
Please send your abstracts, if the contribution is in standard paper presentation form, or proposals for other forms of contribution and participation by Monday, February 14th 2022 to VoicesInArchitecture@westminster.ac.uk. Other forms of participation (film, performance, photography, graphic work, etc.) should be discussed in advance with the Organising Chairs.
Abstracts and proposals may be in Word, Notepad or PDF format with the following information:
When: Saturday, 22nd of January at 9.15am
Where: Online Event (to book tickets please go to Eventbrite)
In recent years, there is an increasing awareness of climate change and environmental sustainability. To act on climate change and explore environmental concerns, 8 universities from the UK and Singapore have come together to organise an environmental conference to raise awareness and discuss potential solutions to related issues.
The conference is a one-day event and will have 6 sessions to cover an array of environmental subjects. This event connects students with industry leaders, through a day of presentations, Q&As and networking sessions in collaboration with our speakers.
When: Thursday, 2nd of December at 6pm (GMT)
Where: M416, Marylebone Campus, School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS
‘… if we are to develop truly sustainable architecture, we don’t necessarily need more materials. We need smarter ones.’
Doris Sung
In her ‘Bloom’ project, architect and inventor Doris Sung created a large lightweight monocoque structure comprised of 414 hyperbolic paraboloid (hypar) shaped panels made from a bimetal lamination of two alloys of nickel, manganese and iron with different thermal expansion coefficients. Bloom is a wonderful exposition of the properties and potential of bimetals in the creation of new responsive building skins that can passively open and close to ventilate and shade the building. An animated film of the Bloom project shows how the surface is activated by sun and shade.
Doris Sung has subsequently developed a whole series of innovative architectural applications using thermobimetal. Her initial research on self-shading, self-ventilating and self-assembling alongside contemporary fabrication technologies has expanded the physical potential of the material, for example in the twisting and folding of her Oculus prototype, and she has now patented systems that are being commercialised for wider application. Her InVert™ window-shading system incorporates small bimetal ‘petals’ within a double-glazed glass module, and as the temperature from the sun increases, the bimetal elements deform and block the sunlight and shade the building’s interior. As the sunlight moves and the temperature cools, the bimetal elements revert to their original shape and position. The resultant solar shading reduces heat gain, which in turn can reduce artificial cooling needs by 28–42%,36 depending on the geographical location.
https://technicalstudies.tumblr.com/
For details contact: Will McLean
When: Thursday 28th October 6.30pm, M416
Where: M416, School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS + Online:
A new social and ecological prerogative demands appropriate material choices, a re-invention of construction and evolving building programmes that looks at lifecycle, embodied energy and energy use.
To coincide with the university Sustainability Month and the recent publication of Environmental Design Sourcebook: Innovative Ideas for a Sustainable Built Environment (RIBA Publishing, 2021), the Authors, Dr Will McLean and Pete Silver will host a book launch and panel discussion.
The discussion will feature contributors from the publication including industry collaborators, and University of Westminster staff and student researchers: Kirsten Haggart (Waugh Thistleton architects), Rosa Schiano-Phan (UoW), Guy Sinclair (UoW) and Urna Sodnamjamts (Hût Architecture).
This panel discussion about design for climate change is the first of a planned series exploring knowledge transfer networks and partnerships with industry. These discussions are hosted by the University of Westminster (on and off-site) and are supported by Dr Stephanie Lasalle from the Research and Knowledge Exchange Office.
https://technicalstudies.tumblr.com/
For details contact: Will McLean
w.f.mclean@wmin.ac.uk
The symposium will bring together researchers and practitioners from a diverse range of disciplines to discuss the agency of falling in contemporary culture. Metaphors of falling are often evoked to describe the current period of insecurity and instability. At the same time, the built environment reflects and in turns reproduces this state of suspension: while highrise construction reshapes the landscapes of cities around the world, including London, its impact on our perception of gravity is yet to be understood. Typically defined as ‘the force that makes objects fall toward the earth’, gravity is so pervasive that we may overlook the ways in which it conditions our daily lives, and how we abandon ourselves to its force – or resist it.
How do creative practices engage with the perception of gravity, balance and falling? Can they mediate our fears and desires to lose the ground? What links can be drawn between the vertiginous spaces of our cities and the conditions of social instability in which we live? These and other related issues will be addressed from a variety of perspectives drawing on art, architecture, design, geography, psychology, and dance. Structured around a series of conversations, the symposium will conclude with a panel discussion with the artist Catherine Yass.
The event is organised in conjunction with Falling Away, a major exhibition of Catherine Yass’s work in Ambika P3. Curated by Davide Deriu and Michael Mazière, the exhibition comprises seven vertiginous films of modern architectural structures that embody the institutions which built them. Spanning the past two decades, it is the first retrospective of the artist’s extensive body of film work in the UK. The joint events are aligned with the Vertigo in the City project based at the School of Architecture + Cities, University of Westminster.
View the Programme for the ‘Falling Away’ Symposium
View the Falling Away Exhibition Catalogue
Register for tickets for the Falling Away Symposium on 22nd October
Register for tickets for the private view of Falling Away on 21st October
View the Falling Away Exhibition Catalogue
The event will be delivered as a webcast, with a limited number of tickets set aside for in person attendance in the Robin Evans Room – broken down into AM and PM slots.
Half of available tickets for in person attendance have been set aside for students, so we would much obliged if you could share details with them – and those who you think may find the event of interest. Those attending virtually are welcome to join the session at any point, and a link will be shared with registered attendees prior to the event.
A recording of each of the sessions will also be made available on the School of Architecture and Cities YouTube Channel shortly after the event.
Where: Gallery Café, 309 Regent St, 18 October – 15 November
When: 18 October, 18.30-19.30
Speakers: Lindsay Bremner, PI of Monsoon Assemblages in conversation with Tom Corby, Associate Dean of Research, Central St Martins.
This exhibition shows a selection of maps drawn by John Cook for Monsoon Assemblages, a research project in the School of Architecture and Cities at the University of Westminster funded by the European Research Council between 2016-2021. The project drew on the environmental humanities, the natural sciences and the spatial disciplines to develop an understanding of the entanglements of the monsoon in everyday life, politics and planning in Chennai, Delhi, Dhaka and Yangon, four of South Asia’s rapidly growing cities. The maps were mechanisms through which the project team constructed understandings of the materiality of the monsoon and the many mechanisms that drive it. At the opening, Lindsay Bremner will discuss the maps with Tom Corby, Associate Dean of Research at Central St Martins.
Monsoon Assemblages was led by Professor Lindsay Bremner, with Dr. Beth Cullen, Christina Geros, John Cook, Harshavardhan Bhat and Anthony Powis. Monsoon Assemblages was a research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 679873, 2016-2021).
Featured image by John Cook.
Congratulations to Jan MacBean who was presented with the runner up prize for his proposal: A Paddington Pollution Solution and the Westway Garden Path.
Jan’s proposal compromises two phases. Phase one looks to manage the dangerously high level of air pollution around the Paddington Basin by sequestering CO2 and NO2 with algae from the canal. A parasitic structure suspends the two laboratory modules that house the technology for processing algae and generating electricity, affording the building self-sufficiency. In the forum of A Paddington Pollution Solution art, installations, seminars and workshops are all component to the dissemination of information about the impact of pollution, making the exchange of knowledge accessible, helping shift the narrative on pollution and urban land use.
Jan is a second year student at the University of Westminster, during his first year he was awarded the Technical Studies Prize recognising his interest in sustainability through modular design. Eager to resolve the problems of land use, public space, ecology and fossil fuel dependence Jan will continue exploring the use of modular and parasitic structures in a public setting during this academic year.
WestonWilliamson+Partners
This prize awarded by the Weston Williamson and Partners is aimed at student projects associated with travelling in or between our UK cities. The winner could be a design project such as a new station, an urban design proposal or a research or dissertation…Anything which adds to the debate about transport in the future.
Featured Image: “System Sketch” by Jan MacBean
Please join us on Friday, 2nd of July from 5pm to 7pm (BST), for the last in the series of events around our graduating students’ virtual degree show OPEN2021. We will host our last year’s graduate, Hamza Shaikh, the founder and the host of the Two Worlds Design podcast, and a maker at Make Architects.
Through recounting his architectural education journey, as well as the ways in which he explored and expanded his interests in relation to the architectural profession and beyond, Hamza will help us tackle the difficult, yet important and timely question: Does university prepare you for practice?
The event will be streamed live on the School of Architecture + Cities’ YouTube channel and Hamza Shaikh’s Two Worlds Design YouTube channel.
5pm Introduction + short film
5.30 – 6.30pm Drawing and the evolving practice
6.30 – 7.00pm Audience Q&A
Hamza Shaikh Bio
Hamza Shaikh is currently a Part 2 Architectural Assistant and Partner at Make Architects, London. He is also the founder & host of the Two Worlds Design podcast series which explores the hidden potential of Architecture by speaking with leading practitioners both within and outside of the field. In 2020 he co-founded the MAD Collective (@the_madcollective),which held multiple symposia to highlight broad issues within the field of architecture and university. He also shares experimental drawing techniques on his popular Instagram page @hamzashaikh.design. More broadly, he shares architectural guidance on his fast-growing YouTube Channel, and he has been described as an ‘Architectural Influencer’ on social media.
Recording of the online event that celebrates University of Westminster‘s work exhibited at the prestigious 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale (22nd May-21st Nov), which took place on the 9th of June 2021, is now available for viewing here.
Academics based within the College of Design, Creative and Digital Industries have co-produced three different installations to respond to the theme: How will we live together?
At the event, we hear more about the ideas underpinning each piece of work, and – given the fundamental themes they address – discuss how architecture and practice based research can help us to better understand the world’s most pressing challenges.
Following an introduction to the three installations, Ifor Duncan, an academic based at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, responds to the work. These contributions are followed by a panel discussion and questions from the audience.
More details about the installations and the academics involved are provided below.
Monsoon Assemblages (led by Lindsay Bremner) and Office of Experiments (led by Neal White) have created an immersive installation that challenges and redefines ideas of border, scale and agency. It draws on climate data and field work to convey how climate change and the Anthropocene are resulting in increasing monsoon volatility, shorter rainy seasons and more frequent extreme weather events. The installation investigates these events through the flight of the Globe Skimmer dragonfly that follows the monsoon from east Africa to southeast Asia and back again. Video footage of the dragonfly collected during field work is projected into the exhibition space highlighting the vulnerability of the dragonfly to shifting monsoonal dynamics.
In a collaboration with the V&A Museum, Shahed Saleem’s Pavilion looks at the self-built and often undocumented world of adapted mosques to explore contemporary multiculturalism in London. The work explores three different case studies that illuminate stories of immigration, identity, and community aspiration. The cases are the Brick Lane mosque, a former Protestant chapel then Synagogue; Old Kent Road mosque housed in a former pub; and Harrow Central mosque, a purpose-built space that sits next door to the converted terraced house it used to occupy. The Pavilion is partly carpeted, as in a mosque, and these stories are explored through 3D architectural reconstructions, filmed interviews and photographs.
The African Fabbers School video-installation project, curated by Paolo Cascone and Maddalena Laddaga, proposes an innovative research by practice agenda for the next generation of European and African architects. The African Fabbers School [AFS] is an itinerant laboratory of ecological design and self-construction for community-oriented projects between Europe and Africa. This ecosystem of site-specific projects has structured an abacus of paradigmatic design to build modus operandi based on a learning by doing methodology. Thanks to the interaction between people from different backgrounds (including African artisans, local communities, European students) the [AFS] investigates the relationships between traditional knowledges, advanced design processes and digital manufacturing.
Respondent
Ifor Duncan is a Post-doctoral fellow in Environmental Humanities at the Center for the Humanities and Social Change, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He is a writer and inter-disciplinary researcher, with a PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths. His research concerns the relationships between political violence and watery spaces and materialities. Previously Ifor taught at the CRA and in the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art.