Category: Uncategorized

Roudaina Alkhani to moderate webinar “Developing Blue and Sustainable Port Cities” | Wednesday, March 30, 5pm CEST (4pm BST)

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

The event is arranged by the Worldwide Network of Port Cities AIVP with prominent speakers on board:

  • Alistair Gale, CEO London Port Authority – communicating their recent strategies
  • Professor Carola Hein, Professor & Head, History of Architecture & Urban Planning Chair, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
  • Jamil Ouazzani, SAPT Tangier
  • Maurice Jansen, Senior researcher, Department Urban Port & Transport Economics, Maritime University, Netherlands

Topics

The port cities and their actors (port and city authorities, businesses and communities) have a significant role to play in ensuring a green Blue Growth at all scales to promote sustainability, ensure ecosystems and deliver the climate agenda aiming at: 

  • Sustainable, smart development, adaptation and management of coastal areas and their complex natures.
  • Sustainable maritime transport and coastal renewable energies.
  • Preserving healthy, green and marine ecosystems.
  • Promoting inclusive environments and blue economies.

To register please go here.

ArCCAT Climate Action Week: Practicing Sustainability – from Portfolio to Practitioner | Tuesday, October 26 at 18:00 (BST), Robin Evans Room (M416) + online

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Tuesday, 26th of October 6pm – 8pm

Where: Robin Evans Room (M416) and online | to book tickets please go to Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/practicing-sustainability-from-portfolio-to-practitioner-tickets-191649176847

Organiser and Moderator: Harry Charrington

Speakers: Chris Morgan, John Gilbert Architects, Glasgow. Gordon O’Connor-Read, Rural Urban Synthesis Society and Laing O’Rourke.

How do you take the ideas and commitment of your student portfolio into architectural practice? How can you build a career that reinforces your ideals and aims, rather than compromises them? These two talks, by architects at very different stages of their careers will illustrate ‘how they do sustainable practice’, and the challenges and success they have had in addressing the concerns they had as students through their built projects.

ArCCAT Climate Action Week: Opening of the ArCCAT Climate Action Exhibition + Launch of the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Campaign | Monday, October 25 from 17:30 (BST), Marylebone Learning Platform

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Monday, 25th of October at 5.30pm – 6.30pm

Where: Marylebone Learning Platform

Speaker: Peter Bonfield

Curators: Lindsay Bremner, Grace Lancto, Francois Girardin and David Scott, with the assistance of Chris Meloy and John Whitmore.

An exhibition of staff and student work from the school of Architecture and Cities supporting sustainability goals accompanied by the launch of a Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Campaign by the Fabrication Lab and the University’s Estates tea

ArCCAT Climate Action Week: The King’s Cross journey to carbon neutrality | Monday, October 25 at 16:00, Robin Evans Room (M416) + Online

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Monday, 25th of October, 4pm (BST)

Where: Robin Evans Room (M416) and online; book at Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-kings-cross-journey-to-carbon-neutrality-tickets-183433162527

Organiser and Moderator: Johannes Novy

Speaker: Stephen Kellett, Sustainability Manager, Ardent Services LLP

Discussant: Roudaina Alkhani

The King’s Cross Estate is one of Europe’s most significant regeneration projects – this talk will highlight the key decisions made from the projects inception through to the design of its buildings and the management in operation that have enabled it to achieve carbon neutrality, on its journey to net zero carbon.

ArCCAT Climate Action Week: Launch of Design Competition for a material reuse station for the studios | Monday, October 25 at 13:00 in Studio, Marylebone Campus

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Monday, 25th of October 13:00-14:00

Where: Studio, Marylebone Campus

Who: Diony Kypraiou, Stefania Boccaletti, Paolo Zaide and Tabatha Mills.

For both students and architectural designers, the physical model is a manifestation of ideas. The act of physical model-making is central to architectural education and our studios. It presents the opportunity to test, explore, speculate, compose and further the design process. How can you as students begin to challenge wasteful practice? Can we make our studio practice more circular?

Five teams of 4 L5 students each, drawn from each of the undergraduate degrees (Interiors, Architecture, AED, Technology) will participate in this design challenge for a week.

ArCCAT Climate Action Week: What about ‘the other half’ of the ‘UN sustainability goals’? | Monday, October 25 at 13:00, M523

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Monday, 25th of October 2021 at 1pm

Where: M523, Marylebone Campus

UoW students-as-co-creators project team 2021: Dana Al Khammach, Elantha Evans, Rebecca Kelly, James Mason and Lavinia Peninno.

Join us for a curated, interactive and enjoyable 15-20 min session at 13:00 on Monday 25th October 2021. This is about what YOU think we can do together, and is part of a wider project about architecture, empathy and the empathic imagination. Come along! And sign up here for more info on the project and future collaborations.

Offered as part of ‘Sustainable Disclosures’ // Expanding architecture education to better nurture people, places and practices for sustainable, inclusive futures (http://eepurl.com/hFy9q1).

SA+C student Jan MacBean awarded a runner up prize in WW+P’s Future of Transport Student Prize competition

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

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

Join the Architecture and Cities Climate Action Taskforce (ArCCAT)

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

The Architecture and Cities Climate Action Taskforce (ArCCAT) was formed in May 2021. It comprises staff and students from the School of Architecture + Cities, the Westminster Business School and members of the University Estates team committed to meeting climate, biodiversity and planetary
system challenges. Over the next three years it aims to:

  • develop short, medium and long term strategies for the school to address the climate crisis
  • build collaborative relations between staff and students to collectively develop a more climate, biodiverse and planetary conscious curriculum
  • establish links between disciplines in the school around climate change
  • raise levels of climate change literacy in the school
  • promote climate conscious practice

ArCCAT comprises four working groups – Strategic Planning, Curriculum Change, Climate Conscious Practice and Events, Campaigns and Communications and works collaboratively with student societies – Westminster Environment Society, Westminster Architecture Society and WestCAN.

In the autumn semester of 2021 ArCCAT activities and events will include:

  • A student competition for the design of an ArCCAT logo (see below)
  • Climate Action Week (25-29 October), part of a month-long series of special events on sustainability across the university to coincide with the start of COP 26 in Glasgow
  • The launch of a Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Dispose Campaign in partnership with the Fabrication Lab and the Marylebone Estates Team
  • An exhibition on the Learning Platform as part of Climate Action Week
  • A student competition for the design of a material reuse station for the studios

To join ArCCAT contact Lindsay Bremner at L.Bremner@westminster.ac.uk , or through Westminster Environment Society, Westminster Architecture Society or WestCAN.

RIBA: The Wren Insurance Association Scholarship | Deadline: Friday, June 18, 2021, 5pm

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

Five scholarships of £6,000 each are now available to support architecture students starting the final year of their Part 2 course in September 2021.

The winners will also have the opportunity to be mentored by an architect from of one of the 67 leading UK architectural practices that make up the Wren Insurance Association, an architects’ professional indemnity mutual. 

Details can be found online at: 

architecture.com/wrenscholarships

gillian.harrison@riba.org

020 73073678

Drawing Matter – Call for Entries: Writing Prize 2021 | Deadline: Midnight (BST) on Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

The Drawing Matter Trust is pleased to announce the return of the Drawing Matter Writing Prize. The competition invites participants to carefully look at drawings and to consider what they reveal about the process of design, and the buildings or objects they represent.

We take the word ‘drawing’ to be as much a verb as a noun, and a shorthand for describing any process of design with a purpose – a building or an object – for which it is being made. The drawing itself may be something other than paper and pencil, a plan or section; it may encompass a sequence or series (such as a sketchbook), or a broad range of techniques, such as collage, photography, models, paintings and, of course, digital media.

Last year’s competition attracted a large number of thoughtful texts by participants based all over the world. Read the prize-winning entries here.

The 2021 Competition

This year, the competition is divided into two categories: Autograph and Archive. Participants are invited to enter either or both categories and should submit one text of up to 1500 words per category.

Category 1: Autograph

Autograph offers the opportunity for writers to reflect on a drawing – or drawings – that they have made themselves. The focus of the text might be on the author’s use of particular techniques and materials (analogue, digital, or anything in-between), or a drawing type or representational mode that they have developed personally and has become a key part of their design process.

For examples of texts by architects and designers on their own drawing practices, explore On their Own Work.

Category 2: Archive

This category asks for texts on contemporary and historical drawings held in the Drawing Matter collection and other drawings collections and archives. In these essays participants should focus on the objects themselves and their meaning, balancing considerations of the process of making drawings, context, and the relationships between drawings and buildings – both built and unbuilt.  

For access to the Drawing Matter collection catalogue, register here.

Prizes

Each category has a ‘general award’ and ‘student award’ sub-category. Participants should indicate on their entry form which award they are entering. Entrants to the student prize will be either currently studying an undergraduate or postgraduate degree. PhD research students should enter the general award.

Autograph (General) Prize: £1000
Autograph (Student) Prize: £1000
Archive (General) Prize: £1000
Archive (Student) Prize: £1000

The competition winners, and other participants with outstanding entries, will be invited to publish their texts on Drawing Matter’s website.

Judges

Prof. Adrian Forty and Prof. Briony Fer will be judging the 2021 competition, with support from the Drawing Matter editorial team. We are pleased to be working with two very distinguished scholars whose own writing and interests overlap so closely with our own.

Entry

The Writing Prize competition is open to anyone aged over 18, with or without a background in architecture or design. We welcome a broad range of approaches towards writing, and voices from art and architectural history, the sciences and humanities, alongside practitioners – architects, designers, artists and writers.

Download entry form and instructions

Deadline for entries: Midnight (BST) on Tuesday 1 June 2021.
We hope to announce the winners on Saturday 17 July at the Drawing Matter Archive in Somerset.

Please direct any questions to competitions@drawingmatter.org.