Recording of the “How will we live together? Westminster at the Venice Biennale” event is now available online

Recording of the online event that celebrates University of Westminster‘s work exhibited at the prestigious 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale (22nd May-21st Nov), which took place on the 9th of June 2021, is now available for viewing here.

Academics based within the College of Design, Creative and Digital Industries have co-produced three different installations to respond to the theme: How will we live together?

At the event, we hear more about the ideas underpinning each piece of work, and – given the fundamental themes they address – discuss how architecture and practice based research can help us to better understand the world’s most pressing challenges.

Following an introduction to the three installations, Ifor Duncan, an academic based at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, responds to the work. These contributions are followed by a panel discussion and questions from the audience.

More details about the installations and the academics involved are provided below.

Monsoon Assemblages (led by Lindsay Bremner) and Office of Experiments (led by Neal White) have created an immersive installation that challenges and redefines ideas of border, scale and agency. It draws on climate data and field work to convey how climate change and the Anthropocene are resulting in increasing monsoon volatility, shorter rainy seasons and more frequent extreme weather events. The installation investigates these events through the flight of the Globe Skimmer dragonfly that follows the monsoon from east Africa to southeast Asia and back again. Video footage of the dragonfly collected during field work is projected into the exhibition space highlighting the vulnerability of the dragonfly to shifting monsoonal dynamics.

In a collaboration with the V&A Museum, Shahed Saleem’s Pavilion looks at the self-built and often undocumented world of adapted mosques to explore contemporary multiculturalism in London. The work explores three different case studies that illuminate stories of immigration, identity, and community aspiration. The cases are the Brick Lane mosque, a former Protestant chapel then Synagogue; Old Kent Road mosque housed in a former pub; and Harrow Central mosque, a purpose-built space that sits next door to the converted terraced house it used to occupy. The Pavilion is partly carpeted, as in a mosque, and these stories are explored through 3D architectural reconstructions, filmed interviews and photographs.

The African Fabbers School video-installation project, curated by Paolo Cascone and Maddalena Laddaga, proposes an innovative research by practice agenda for the next generation of European and African architects. The African Fabbers School [AFS] is an itinerant laboratory of ecological design and self-construction for community-oriented projects between Europe and Africa. This ecosystem of site-specific projects has structured an abacus of paradigmatic design to build modus operandi based on a learning by doing methodology. Thanks to the interaction between people from different backgrounds (including African artisans, local communities, European students) the [AFS] investigates the relationships between traditional knowledges, advanced design processes and digital manufacturing.

Respondent

Ifor Duncan is a Post-doctoral fellow in Environmental Humanities at the Center for the Humanities and Social Change, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He is a writer and inter-disciplinary researcher, with a PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths. His research concerns the relationships between political violence and watery spaces and materialities. Previously Ifor taught at the CRA and in the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art.

How will we live together? – Westminster at the Venice Biennale | Wednesday, June 9, 2021, 16:00-18:00 (BST)

When: Wednesday, 9th of June 2021, 16:00-18:00 (BST)

Register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/how-will-we-live-together-westminster-at-the-venice-biennale-tickets-155634983425

Join us for an online event that celebrates University of Westminster‘s work that is being exhibited at the prestigious 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale (22nd May-21st Nov).

Academics based within the College of Design, Creative and Digital Industries have co-produced three different installations to respond to the theme: How will we live together?

At the event, we will hear more about the ideas underpinning each piece of work, and – given the fundamental themes they address – discuss how architecture and practice based research can help us to better understand the world’s most pressing challenges.

Following an introduction to the three installations, Ifor Duncan, an academic based at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, will respond to the work. These contributions will be followed by a panel discussion and questions from the audience.

More details about the installations and the academics involved are provided below.

Monsoon Assemblages (led by Lindsay Bremner) and Office of Experiments (led by Neal White) have created an immersive installation that challenges and redefines ideas of border, scale and agency. It draws on climate data and field work to convey how climate change and the Anthropocene are resulting in increasing monsoon volatility, shorter rainy seasons and more frequent extreme weather events. The installation investigates these events through the flight of the Globe Skimmer dragonfly that follows the monsoon from east Africa to southeast Asia and back again. Video footage of the dragonfly collected during field work is projected into the exhibition space highlighting the vulnerability of the dragonfly to shifting monsoonal dynamics.

In a collaboration with the V&A Museum, Shahed Saleem’s Pavilion looks at the self-built and often undocumented world of adapted mosques to explore contemporary multiculturalism in London. The work explores three different case studies that illuminate stories of immigration, identity, and community aspiration. The cases are the Brick Lane mosque, a former Protestant chapel then Synagogue; Old Kent Road mosque housed in a former pub; and Harrow Central mosque, a purpose-built space that sits next door to the converted terraced house it used to occupy. The Pavilion is partly carpeted, as in a mosque, and these stories are explored through 3D architectural reconstructions, filmed interviews and photographs.

The African Fabbers School video-installation project, curated by Paolo Cascone and Maddalena Laddaga, proposes an innovative research by practice agenda for the next generation of European and African architects. The African Fabbers School [AFS] is an itinerant laboratory of ecological design and self-construction for community-oriented projects between Europe and Africa. This ecosystem of site-specific projects has structured an abacus of paradigmatic design to build modus operandi based on a learning by doing methodology. Thanks to the interaction between people from different backgrounds (including African artisans, local communities, European students) the [AFS] investigates the relationships between traditional knowledges, advanced design processes and digital manufacturing.

Respondent

Ifor Duncan is a Post-doctoral fellow in Environmental Humanities at the Center for the Humanities and Social Change, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He is a writer and inter-disciplinary researcher, with a PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths. His research concerns the relationships between political violence and watery spaces and materialities. Previously Ifor taught at the CRA and in the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art.

Monsoon [+ other] Grounds – Full Programme_Thursday 21st and Friday 22nd of March,

Monsoon [+ other] Grounds is the third in a series of symposia convened by the Monsoon Assemblages project. It will comprise a key-note address, inter-disciplinary panels, and an exhibition. The event will bring together scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines to engage in conversations about geologies, soils, histories, spatialities, and modifications of monsoon [+ other] grounds.

The confirmed keynote speaker is:

Tim Ingold, Professor and Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. His early work involved ethnographic research amongst the Skolt Saami of northeast Finland. This led to a more general concern with human-animal relations. Most recently, he has been working on the connections between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture, conceived as ways of exploring the relations between human beings and the environments they inhabit, as mutually enhancing ways of engaging with our surroundings. Ingold is author of numerous books, anthologies and essays, including, most recently, The Life of Lines (Routledge, 2015) and Anthropology: Why it Matters (Polity Press, 2018).

Event Programme

Thursday 21 March

15.30 Registration / Tea

15.45 Welcome: Simon Joss, University of Glasgow

16.00 – 17.00 Exhibition walk-about led by John Cook

Exhibitors: Alexandra Arenes, Matt Barlow, Blue Temple, Hari Byles, Corinna Dean, DS18 students, Tumpa Fellows, MONASS, Ben Pollock

17.00 – 18.00 [multi]grounds

Chair: Ed Wall, University of Greenwich

Lindsay Bremner, MONASS: On sediment as method

Ifor Duncan, Goldsmiths College: Sedimentary Witness

18.30 Keynote Lecture: Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen

Chair: Lindsay Bremner

Friday 22 March

09.45 Registration / Coffee

10.00 Welcome + introduction: Lindsay Bremner, MONASS

10.15 – 11.30 [over]ground matters

Chair: Godofredo Pereira, Royal College of Art

Alexandra Arenes, University of Manchester: Mapping the Critical Zones

Christina Leigh Geros, MONASS: Here be Dragons

Avi Varma, Goldsmiths College: Unjust Intonations

11.30 – 11.45 Tea

11.45 – 13.00 [inter]ground matters

Chair: Kirsten Hastrup, University of Copenhagen

Owain Jones, Bath Spa University: Monsoon + Tide

Jonathan Cane, University of the Witwatersrand: Permeability, Ocean, Concrete

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch: Convivial Grounds

14.00 – 15.00 [under]ground matters

Chair: Tim Waterman, The Bartlett UCL

Anthony Powis, MONASS: The Materiality of Groundwater: Leaking, Seeping, Swelling, Cracking

Matt Barlow, University of Adelaide: Floating (under) ground

15:00 – 16:00 [in]ground matters

Chair: Alfredo Ramirez Galindo, AA

Eric Guibert, University of Westminster: Architectural Soils

Harshavardhan Bhat, MONASS: About a Monsoon Forest

16.00 – 16.15 Tea

16.15 – 17.30 [with]ground matters

Chair: Radha D’Souza, University of Westminster

Naiza Khan, Goldsmiths College: Sticky Rice and Other Stories

Beth Cullen, MONASS: Brick

Labib Hossain, Cornell University: Wetness and the City: A Critical Reading of the Dry and Permanent Ground Through the Practice of Muslin Weaving in Bengal

17.30 – 17.45 Closing Remarks: David Chandler

17.45 -19.00 Drinks