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: 13:00-14:00, Thursday, 2nd of May
Where: Erskine Room (M523), 5th Floor, Marylebone Campus
Sean Griffiths is Professor of Architecture at Westminster and currently practices as Modern Architect. He is a former director of FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste).
The Architecture Research Forum is a seminar series hosted by the Architecture + Cities Research Group where staff present work-in-progress for discussion.
In 1966, Aino and Alvar Aalto worked together with Leonardo Mosso on a prototypical project for a series of warehouses for the Ferrero Company. Though the project was shelved shortly before going onsite, their collaboration had produced an original outcome. A former intern in Aalto’s office, Mosso had – up to that moment – been Aalto’s local architect for his Italian commissions. Centred on a critical investigation of their Ferrero Warehouse and Office project (1966–67), our research explores the evolution of an ecologically-motivated concept of reflexive standardisation premised on repetitive components and bespoke, or flexible, joints that ‘bind the elements’. The forum will examine the impulses that informed the Aaltos’ realisations of an elastic standardisation in the 1930s and 1940s, and how Mosso, one of the pioneers of computation in architecture, interpreted and extended this method at the city-scale through computation.
Roberto Bottazzi is a Senior Tutor at the Department of Architecture. He is interested in the history and uses of computational tools in architecture and urbanism.
Harry Charrington is Head of the Department of Architecture. He worked for Elissa Aalto, and co-authored the oral history of the Aalto atelier Alvar Aalto: The Mark of the Hand (2011).
When: 5 April 2018, 13.00–14.00
Where: Erskine Room, 5th Floor
The Architecture Research Forum is a seminar series hosted by the Architecture + Cities Research Group where staff present work-in-progress for discussion.
ALL WELCOME
After the devastating war on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09, which left most of it in ruins, we took up the challenge of trying to think how Gazans could manage to reconstruct their city under such conditions. The presentation discusses the development of a new typology we have called the Green Urban Lab. The Lab explores creative ways to stitch together the fragmented urban landscape using speculative and live projects. In what we call the ‘Absurd-City’ we take advantage of the blurred boundaries between the street, the block and the room to rethink the notion of home and domesticity. In our proposed intervention to create the ‘Subver-city’, we envisage the ‘Green Urban Lab’ acting as a threshold between private and public space: a means to offer alternative ways for Gaza residents to engage in ‘self-help’, hinting at possible alternative forms of reconstruction.
Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari are practising architects at NG Architects and Senior Lecturers at the University of Westminster. Their current research by design has won the 2017 RIBA’s President Award for research (commendation).
When: 15 March 2018, 13.00–14.00
Where: Erskine Room, 5th Floor
The Architecture Research Forum is a seminar series hosted by the Architecture + Cities Research Group where staff present work-in-progress for discussion.
ALL WELCOME
The place of oral history within the historiography of modern architecture is not yet fully accepted, understood or theorised. Faced with a wealth of tangible evidence found in photographs, plans, documents and models, architectural history rarely includes the voices of those involved in the construction of a building, and remains wary of diverse, unauthorised and unofficial histories. In this talk I explore instances where the use of oral history is integral to widening the perspective of traditional architectural history. Here, oral testimony reveals a wide cast of co-producers involved in the making of modern architecture giving voice to marginalised groups with the potential to undermine overarching architectural narratives.
Christine Wall is Reader in Architectural and Construction History, Co-editor of The Construction History Journal, and an editor of The Oral History Journal.
The Architecture Research Forum is a seminar series hosted by the Architecture + Cities Research Group where staff present work-in-progress for discussion.
Where: Erskine Room (M523), Marylebone Campus
When: Thursday, 1 February 2018, 13.00–14.00
ALL WELCOME!
This presentation will disseminate the research outcome of a RIBA Research Trust funded project that explored the interplay of space and light in Le Corbusier’s sacred buildings from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. Measurable and unmeasurable aspects of these divine luminous environments were investigated through extensive field work, theoretical physical and digital modelling. The findings offer new insights into the unique lighting strategies adopted by Le Corbusier for the creation of sacred luminosity in his religious buildings. A similar research methodology has now been employed for the investigation of light in Louis Kahn’s museums, and preliminary results of this research will also be presented.
Benson Lau is a Reader and Course Leader of the BSc (Hons) Architecture and Environmental Design at the University of Westminster. He has practised as architect and environmental design consultant since 1996, and joined academia in 2005.
The Architecture Research Forum is a seminar series hosted by the Architecture + Cities Research Group where staff present work-in-progress for discussion.
Where: Erskine Room (M/523), Marylebone Campus
When: 7 December 2017, 13.00–14.00
ALL WELCOME
