Architecture History + Theory Lecture Series

Architecture History + Theory Lecture Series: “Papered Spaces: Writing Cultures, Clerks and Provincial Office Architecture in Colonial India” by Tania Sengupta, Thursday, March 25 at 18:30 GMT

Posted on March 22, 2021 by Mirna Pedalo

When: Thursday, 25th of March at 6.30pm GMT

ALL WELCOME!

This talk is about a spatial and experiential world of paper records, files, textual cultures, bureaucracies, officers and clerks. I look at ordinary buildings of British colonial everyday governance in interior areas of India in the nineteenth century. Colonial governance in India was based on global technologies of writing produced by European mercantile capitalism, as well as on the transformation – into paper-forms – of the embodied administrative knowledge held by extant Indian (Mughal) officials. I reflect here on how the material logic of paper and paperwork profoundly shaped and permeated the spaces of the colonial office (cutcherry). I also think about their connection with wider geographies of (colonial) Indian paper and ink economy, as well as how various immaterial processes and information networks in fact subverted colonial paper rule and worked through alternative spatialities.
Dr Tania Sengupta

Architecture History + Theory Guest Lecture: Prof David Porter “Learning from Neave Brown: The Poetics of Habitation,” Thursday, March 12, 18:30, Robin Evans Room (M416), Marylebone Campus

Posted on March 9, 2020 by Mirna Pedalo

When: Thursday, 12th of March, 18:30

Where: Robin Evans Room (M416), Marylebone Campus, University of Westminster, NW1 5LS

Neave Brown received the RIBA’s Gold Medal in 2018 in recognition of his contribution to the architecture of housing. David Porter worked with him for many years and will use an unpublished Dutch project, the super-dense Projekt Zwollsestraat, to reflect on Brown’s more famous housing projects in Camden: Alexandra Road and Fleet Road. He will explore his approach to the making of architecture and urban space.

Biography

David Porter is an architect, urbanist and educator. He was Professor of Architecture at the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing (2012-8); President of the Architectural Association (2015-8); and Head of the Mackintosh School of Architecture, the Glasgow School of Art (2000-11). From 2011-14 he was also Adjunct Professor in the School of Architecture & Design at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Formerly a partner in Neave Brown David Porter Architects working on high-density urban projects in the Netherlands, David was also a founding partner of Clements & Porter Architects, is a Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects of Scotland and of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Trustee of Jacksons Lane, North London’s creative performance space. He now teaches in the BA Architecture course here at the University of Westminster.

Architecture History + Theory Guest Lecture: Prof Julian Henriques “Sonic Architecture: flesh and space at auditory frequencies,” Thursday, March 5, 18:30, Robin Evans Room (M416), Marylebone Campus

Posted on February 26, 2020 by Mirna Pedalo

When: Thursday, 5th of March, 18:30

Where: Robin Evans Room (M416), Marylebone Campus, University of Westminster, NW1 5LS

In this talk I explore what “thinking through sounding” and “sonic space” might reveal about the kind space and place we inhabit in our ordinary lives. Sonic space is where sound defines space, rather than the way space is often assumed to define sound. Examples of sonic spaces in Jamaican culture include reggae dub music (King Tubby and other tracks played on vinyl in the talk), the speaker box architecture of the dancehall sound system session, my own sonic sculptures and the paintings of the artist Denzil Forrester. I then deploy the idea of sonic space as a critique of default ocularcentric assumptions of perception, the emptiness of the geometrical abstractions of line and plane, the rationalisation of vision that provides such a convenient metaphor for hierarchies of power. From this I pursue a conception of vibrational frequencies – whether auditory or visual – as constituting the medium through which we move, are enfleshed and share our dwelling.

Biography

Professor Julian Henriques is convenor of the MA Scriptwriting and the MA Cultural Studies programmes, director of the Topology Research Unit and a co-founder of the Sound System Outernational practice research group in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London. Prior to this, Julian ran the film and television department at CARIMAC at the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. His credits as a writer and director include the reggae musical feature film Babymother and We the Ragamuffin short. Julian researches street cultures, music and technologies and is interested in the uses of sound as a critical and creative tool. His sound sculptures include Knots & Donuts (2011) at Tate Modern and his books include Changing the Subject (1998), Sonic Bodies (2011) and Sonic Media (forthcoming 2021).

Architecture History + Theory Guest Lecture: CJ Lim “Smartcities, Resilient Landscapes,” Thursday, February 27, Robin Evans Room (M416), Marylebone Campus, 18:30

Posted on February 21, 2020 by Mirna Pedalo

When: Thursday, 27th of February, 18:30

Where: Robin Evans Room (M416), Marylebone Campus

The Thursday evening guest lecture series continues this week with a lecture by Bartlett professor of Architecture and Urbanism, CJ Lim. The lecture will outline his new book, Smartcities, Resilient Landscapes and Eco-warriors.

The book represents a crucial voice in the discourse of climate change and the potential opportunities to improve the ecological function of existing habitats or create new landscapes which are considered beneficial to local ecology and resilience. The notion of the Smartcity is developed through a series of international case studies, some commissioned by government organisations, others speculative and polemic. Following on from the success of the first edition ‘Smartcities + Eco-Warriors’ (2010), this second edition has nine new case studies, and additional ecological sustainability studies covering the romance of trees.

CJ Lim is the Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at the Bartlett, UCL. His teaching and design research focus are on multi-disciplinary innovative interpretations of social, political, and environmental sustainability programmes in urban planning, architecture and landscape. He is the recipient of the Royal Academy of Arts London ‘Grand Architecture Prize’. His authored books include ‘Smartcities + Eco-warriors’ (2010), ‘Short Stories: London in two-and-a-half Dimensions’ (2011), ‘Food City’ (2014) and ‘Inhabitable Infrastructures: Science fiction or urban future?’ (2017).