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: From Friday, 24th of June (5pm) to 14th of July 2022 (available for viewing Monday – Saturday, 9am-6pm)
Where: Silver Building in the Royal Docks, 60 Dock Road, E16 1YZ
BSc Architecture and Environmental Design will be hosting a public exhibition at the Silver Building in the Royal Docks, where local people can explore the students re-imagining of the neighbourhood.
There is a public opening on Friday 24 June to which everyone is welcome.
To attend the opening, please register here.
When: Thursday, 16th of June 2022 from 5.30pm to 8.30pm
Where: Marylebone Studios, Marylebone Campus, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS
Head of School Harry Charrington cordially invites you to attend the opening of the graduating students’ degree show, OPEN 2022, featuring work from
Preview
Thursday 16 June, 5.30pm
Show opened by Kate Macintosh MBE, 6pm
Exhibition continues
Friday 17 June – Monday 11 July
PLEASE SEE ATTACHED INVITATION FOR DETAILS AND TO [open2022.eventbrite.co.uk]REGISTER VIA EVENTBRITE.
You can also RSVP to DCDI-Events@westminster.ac.uk
When: From 5th to 30th of April 2022
Where: Lethaby Gallery, Central St Martins, Granary Square, N1C 4AA
The work of Monsoon Assemblages and the Manifest Data Lab visualises geophysical and atmospheric data as ways of making climate change perceptible and public.
Through drawings, maps, animations and models saturated with data from multiple sources, Planetary Assemblages proposes a critical engagement by bringing two groups of work into dialogue. This dialogue demonstrates the power of art and design to explore our connections to the climate crisis and motivate awareness of the material, social and cultural ways we are implicated in it.
For more details please go here.
When: Friday, 14th of February at 6.30pm (GMT)
Where: The School of Architecture + Cities, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS
Please join us from 6.30pm on Friday 4 February for the launch of MORE 2021, an exhibition of the School’s Postgraduate Students’ thesis projects from the following courses:
The celebratory event will be followed by contributions from each of the participating courses, the School’s annual student awards, and will close with a musical performance.
It would be great to have as many of you – whether you teach on these courses or not – in the room to celebrate on the night, but for those who cannot come it is a hybrid event and you can attend online (via Zoom).
Register for the launch on Eventbrite
In addition to the physical exhibition, there will be a digital exhibition and catalogue with representation from all our postgraduate courses and PhD students, as well as our ongoing research activities and projects.
The exhibition will continue until 11 February at http://more2021.net/
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.
THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER’S SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE + CITIES INVITES YOU TO OPEN 2021
Thursday 17th June To be opened by Sunand Prasad
Head of School Harry Charrington cordially invites you to attend the opening of our graduating students’ virtual degree show, OPEN 2021, featuring work from Architecture BA, Interior Architecture BA, Architecture and Environmental Design BSc, Architectural Technology BSc, Designing Cities BA and Master of Architecture (MArch) (RIBA pt II).
The degree show is part of the School of Architecture and Cities and the second online edition of its annual Exhibition of work.
PLEASE SEE THE INVITATION FOR DETAILS AND TO REGISTER FOR THE LAUNCH (VIA EVENTBRITE).
OPEN 2021 CONTINUES ONLINE 18 JUNE – 30 SEPTEMBER at OPENWestminster.London
London Festival of Architecture Events
In addition to OPEN 2021, the University of Westminster has a number of events taking place as part of this year’s London Festival of Architecture:
10 June, 5.30 – 8pm
Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope
11 June, 5 – 7pm
Practices of Care – A Cross-Disciplinary Discussion on Designing for Mental Health and Wellbeing
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/practices-of-care-tickets-154377857327
21 June, 10am – 1pm
Thinking Practicing Listening
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/thinking-practicing-listening-tickets-154373271611
25 June, 4 – 6pm
Let’s Build @StJohn’s School Camberwell
https://climatedemonstrator.org.uk/
27 June, 2 – 4pm
Co-Production Community Hub Workshop
https://www.londonfestivalofarchitecture.org/event/co-production-community-hub-workshop/
When: Friday 22 January 17:00 GMT
Where: More2020.net
The School of Architecture and Cities cordially invites you to attend the opening of our graduating students’ online degree show, MORE 2020, an online exhibition of the University of Westminster’s Master’s students thesis projects featuring work from Architecture MA, Interior Architecture MA, Architecture and Environmental Design MSc, Urban Design MA, International Planning and Sustainable Development MA and RIBA Part III.
The exhibition will launch with a webinar at 17:00 on Friday 22nd January with contributions from participating courses staff and students, presentation of awards for work in the show and a live performance. A link to the webinar will be available on the MORE2020.net website from 17:00 on the day, and can also be accessed directly here
The degree show is part of the School of Architecture and Cities and the first online edition of its annual Exhibition of work, following on from the hugely successful OPEN 2020.
PLEASE SEE ATTACHED INVITATION FOR DETAILS AND TO REGISTER VIA EVENTBRITE.
You can also RSVP to DCDI-Events@westminster.ac.uk
Due to exceptional circumstances caused by COVID-19 and the impossibility of holding our annual OPEN exhibition in our Marylebone Studios, we will conclude this academic year by launching VirtualOPEN. This will be the first online annual Exhibition celebrating the work of the School of Architecture + Cities. It has been envisaged as a navigable online show in which visitors will be able to view the work of all our design studios and year groups, as well as interact with each other.
VirtualOPEN will celebrate the amazingly innovative output that has been created this year under the most difficult of circumstances. It will promote the collective endeavour of our students, staff and support staff, and give us a positive and celebratory end to the academic year after all the gloom of recent months. VirtualOPEN will feature the energy and talent of more than 750 students, re-tuned to the possibilities of a virtual environment to produce something experimental, unexpected and exciting.
We look forward to welcoming you all to the opening at 6pm, Thursday, July 2!
Details of how the show will work and how you can contribute can be found here.
The work of Thomas McLucas, Architecture BA Honours student, was selected from entries drawn across the UK for the exhibition ‘INDUSTRIALISED’ at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
University of Westminster | News
The RIBA exhibition titled ‘INDUSTRIALISED’ shows drawings by over 40 students from 20 schools of architecture across the UK. It parallels another exhibition in the Architecture Gallery called ‘Beyond Bauhaus’, both exhibitions respond to the centenary of the opening of the historic Bauhaus school.
The Bauhaus school was established under the Weimar Republic in 1919 and closed in 1933 under the Nazis. The school’s teaching program cohered around a novel concept of industrial design, which for them meant the production of a universal, totally integrated environment.
This year, the BA Architecture Studio DS2/6 set out to work in a truly post-industrial environment in a project led by Dr Victoria Watson, Senior Lecturer at the University. The project was called CAR PARK to COSMOS, it asked students to remodel a car park in Stevenage for a hypothetical organisation, ‘The International Institute of Cosmism (IIC)’, who plan to develop the car park as a place of post-industrial work, specifically to make Cosmist movies. Students were encouraged to think like Russian Cosmists and to invent their own utopias, just like architects of the Bauhaus would have done.
Thomas McLucas’ approach was heavily inspired by the monumentalism of the Soviet Union, as can be seen, for example, in the Shukov tower or Fernsehturm in Berlin, which the students visited on their field trip.
Speaking about his work, Thomas said: “It is highly exciting to be exhibited at the RIBA as part of the Bauhaus centenary celebrations. It is important to reflect on our industrial past as we are in a new technological revolution, one where what we are producing is less material but no less impactful.
“My project acts as a critique of the post-industrial nature of mass media, aiming to highlight this by pulling the production and transmission into one transparent structure. Transparent, in that activity can be seen through the meshwork form, and that the architecture clearly expresses what it does.”
Talking about his achievement, Dr Watson said: “Thomas McLucas’s project is remarkable for the way it poses questions about the nature of post-industrial work and of the new kinds of media technologies that effect our environment, even though we cannot necessarily see them.”
The exhibition will run until 30 November at the RIBA, 66 Portland Place.
University of Westminster | News
Featured image: ©Thomas McLucas
When: 25 October 2019 to 24 November 2019
Where: Ambika P3, University of Westminster, Marylebone, London, NW1 5LS
Opening Hours: Wed-Sun 11am-7pm
Admission: FREE
The largest-ever exhibition devoted to menswear Invisible Men: An Anthology from the Westminster Menswear Archive is now open to the public and features a collection of previously unseen examples of Alexander McQueen’s early menswear.
Situated in a vast 14,000sq ft subterranean space opposite Madame Tussauds Invisible Men will showcase 167 garments from over 50 different designers, the vast majority of which have never been on public display before, including a section devoted to Alexander McQueen.
If tutors or course leaders would like to book for their class to visit the exhibition, please email mensweararchive@westminster.ac.uk
Professor Andrew Groves, the co-curator of Invisible Men, said:
We are thrilled to be able to display a selection of McQueen’s early menswear covering the years from 1997 to 1999 within the exhibition. There were no examples of McQueen’s menswear included in the V&A’s Savage Beauty exhibition, so this is the first chance for the public to see his early menswear designs. They will be able to study the exceptional tailoring skills that he learnt on Savile Row – these were the skills that informed the radical womenswear he was creating during the same period.
As well McQueen, the show also features the work of over 50 other designers covering sportswear, tailoring, uniforms and workwear and aims to redress the balance in fashion exhibitions that usually solely focus on displaying womenswear.
Drawn exclusively from the Westminster Menswear Archive the show explores the story of British menswear over the last 120 years, presenting designer garments alongside military, functional, and utilitarian outfits. It explores the design language of menswear, which predominately focuses on the replication of archetypal functional garments intended for specific industrial, technical or military use.
Contemporary designers featured include Craig Green, the current menswear Designer of the Year, and Samuel Ross, whose label A-COLD-WALL* won the BFC/GQ Designer Menswear Fund award in June.
Examples of menswear from British brand Burberry include a tailored evening tailcoat dating from 1925, and a Hi-Viz jacket from Christopher Bailey’s last Burberry collection in 2018, almost a century later.
A section devoted to wearable technology includes an example of the world’s first Graphene coated jacket and a solar-powered trenchcoat designed by Junya Watanabe. A section devoted to C.P. Company’s Urban Protection from the late 1990s includes garments that inflate, light up, detect toxic gas, or turn into chairs.
Also on display is a section devoted to Britain’s obsession to sportswear that includes garments from Gieves, Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney, Palace, Mr Fish, Stone Island, Umbro, Aitor Throup and BodyMap. The exhibition includes several items from Stone Island’s very first collection from 1982, an Italian brand that went on to become firmly established as a favourite of British football casuals in the 1980s.
Alongside the designer garments, there are examples of British workwear covering the last 100 years including prison uniforms, postman’s uniforms, a police taser suit, and military camouflage. These pieces highlight how influential utilitarian workwear and uniform have been in inspiring fashion designers to create new fashion.
Invisible Men is curated by Professor Andrew Groves and Dr Danielle Sprecher.
DESIGNERS IN THE EXHIBITION INCLUDE:
A Cold Wall*, Adidas, Aitor Throup, Alexander McQueen, Austin Reed , Belstaff, Bernhard Willhelm , Blades, BodyMap, Burberry, Burton, C.P. Company, Calvin Klein, Carol Christian Poell, Christian Dior, Comme Des Garcons, Craig Green, Dege & Skinner, Gieves, H&M, Harrods, Helmut Lang, Irvine Sellars, Issey Miyake, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Jeremy Scott, John Stephen, Junior Gaultier, Junya Watanabe, Left Hand, Levi’s, Lewis Leathers, Liam Hodges, Mackintosh, Martin Margiela, Massimo Osti, Meadham Kirchhoff, Michiko Koshino, Mr Fish, Nigel Cabourn, Palace, Paul Smith, Peter Saville, Prada, Sibling, Stella McCartney, Stone Island, Umbro, Undercover, Vexed Generation, Vivienne Westwood, Vollebak, Zegna Sport.
![Invitation to OPEN2021 [online] | Thursday, June 17, 2021 from 18:30 to 21:00 (BST)](http://www.openstudiowestminster.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/OPEN-2021-Digital-Invitation-scaled.jpg)
