Tag: Architecture Research Forum

Architecture Research Forum: “Ecological Standardisation” Roberto Bottazzi & Harry Charrington, Thursday 5th April, Erskine Room, 5th Floor, 13:00-14:00

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

ROBERTO BOTTAZZI & HARRY CHARRINGTON: Ecological Standardisation

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

Architecture Research Forum: “Subver-City: the Green Urban Lab typology” Yara Sharif & Nasser Golzari, Thursday 15th March, Erskine Room, 5th Floor, 13:00-14:00

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

YARA SHARIF & NASSER GOLZARI: Subver-City: the Green Urban Lab typology

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

Architecture Research Forum: “Accounting for Alognon Pragma: Recent work in the Studio and On-site” Alessandro Ayuso, Thursday 1st March, Erskine Room, 5th Floor, 13:00-14:00

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

ALESSANDRO AYUSO: Accounting for Alognon Pragma: Recent work in the Studio and On-site

My work explores the intersection of human bodies and architecture by envisioning non-ideal, deviant, playful, and personal images of embodied conditions. It is de ned by artefacts generated in the pursuit of three interconnected strands. The first investigates the potential of representations of human figures, or Body Agents, to embed subject-positions in architectural de- sign through their depiction in drawings, models, and ornament. The second, the Agent Bodies drawing series, envisions imagined body-like assemblages ‘from the inside-out,’ revealing a fictional spatiality of the posthuman body. The third strand, Leaky Embodiment Alter-ego Personas, are full-scale constructions of figures that I see as tragicomic actors with uncooperative bodies. They are provocations, presenting a monstrous, ridiculous subjectivity. These pieces are steeped in idiosyncrasies and intuition, and could be considered as alognon pragma, or ‘things without account’. Their discursive value is presented here through a framing and recounting of the underlying questions, processes, and precedents integral to their conception.

Alessandro Ayuso is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster, where he teaches design and theory on the Interior Architecture and Architecture courses.

Where: Erskine Room (M523), Marylebone Campus

When: 1 March 2018, 13.00–14.00

ALL WELCOME

Architecture Research Forum: “On the Estate” Julian Williams, Thursday 15th February, Erskine Room, 5th Floor, 13:00-14:00

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

JULIAN WILLIAMS: On the Estate

What makes an estate, and what does it mean to be part of one? What do estates embody and how do they act as vehicles for change, or resistance to change? These questions form the research context for an emerging networking project which examines the concept of the estate as a model for developing and managing housing. The plan is to set up a network of academics, professionals and users with the aim of developing a deeper understanding of the estate from history and from current developments, and to then disseminate this knowledge and help shape more informed future practices in the field.

Julian Williams is an architect, Principal Lecturer and BA Architecture Course Leader at the University of Westminster.

Where: Erskine Room (M523), Marylebone Campus

When: 15 February 2018, 13.00–14.00

ALL WELCOME!

Architecture Research Forum: ” Talking about building/s: oral history and modern architecture” Christine Wall, Thursday 1st February, Erskine Room, 5th Floor, 13:00-14:00

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CHRISTINE WALL: Talking about building/s: oral history and modern architecture

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!

Architecture Research Forum: “White Light and Black Shadow – The Poetics of Light in Le Corbusier’s Sacred Architecture” Benson Lau, Thursday 7th December, Erskine Room, 5th Floor, 13:00-14:00

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Benson Lau: White Light and Black Shadow – The Poetics of Light in Le Corbusier’s Sacred Architecture

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

Architecture Research Forum: “In What Style Should We Build” Shahed Saleem, 23rd November, Erskine Room, 5th Floor, 13:00 – 14:00

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Shahed Saleem: In What Style Should We Build?

In what style should we build? This question, which has resonated throughout European architectural history for some 150 years, is revisited and reapplied in my talk to the predicament of mosque design in Britain today. Style became an existential battleground for the Victorians, representing contested notions of morality, identity, nostalgia and historicism in a period of self-doubt and reinvention. I argue that Muslim architecture in Britain, and in the West more broadly, where diverse Muslim communities are building as diasporic minority communities, is entwined in similar negotiations of identity and positioning.

Drawing from my research into the architectural and social history of the British mosque, I will provide an historical overview of mosque architecture in Britain, and will set out what I see as its current predicaments. Alongside this, drawing from my own design practice and experiences of working with Muslim communities, I will also suggest my own responses to the questions raised.

Shahed Saleem teaches at the University of Westminster and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Bartlett, Survey of London, and a practising architect.

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!

Where: Erskine Room (M/523), Marylebone Campus

When: Thursday 23rd November, 13:00-14:00

Architecture Research Forum: “Still Dreaming? Space After Spectacle and the Indifference of Architecture” Douglas Spencer – 2nd November, Erskine Room, 5th Floor, 13:00-14:00

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Douglas Spencer: Still Dreaming? Space After Spectacle and the Indifference of Architecture 

Susan Buck-Morss, in her Dreamworld and Catastrophe, observed that the end of the Cold War was marked by the passing of the dream-forms of modernity — capitalist, socialist and fascist — as sustained through the experience of the built environment. If, following Walter Benjamin, we understand awakening from the dreamworld to be premised on the conscious realisation of its utopian fantasies, then what hope remained now, she asked, in the absence of any dreamworld? This paper takes up this question through an analysis of the seemingly indifferent and post-spectacular spaces of contemporary architecture, offering, in response, an analysis that explores both its historical and its phenomenological implications.

Douglas Spencer teaches at the University of Westminster and the Architectural Association, and is the author of The Architecture of Neoliberalism (Bloomsbury, 2016).

Where: Erskine Room (M/523), Marylebone Campus

When: Thursday 2nd November, 13:00-14:00

Architecture Research Forum: MONASS “Reporting from the Field” with Lindsay Bremner, Beth Cullen and Christina Geros_19th October, Erskine Room, 5th Floor, 13:00-14:00

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MONASS: Reporting from the Field

With: Lindsay Bremner, Beth Cullen and Christina Geros

Monsoon Assemblages is a five-year-long European Research Council funded research project investigating relations between rapid urbanisation and changing monsoon climates in South Asian cities. The MONASS team spent six weeks in Chennai over the summer conducting field work for the project. In this seminar, we will briefly sketch out the monsoon assemblage thesis and the questions that framed this field work. We will take you to a number of the sites we studied and discuss how our engagement with them has both challenged and extended our thesis and shaped future work.

Lindsay Bremner is a Professor and Beth Cullen and Christina Geros are Research Fellow at the University of Westminster

Where: Erskine Room (M/523), Marylebone Campus

When: Thursday 19 October, 13:00–14:00

ALL WELCOME!