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.
Monsoon Assemblages will launch Monsoon as Method: Assembling Monsoonal Multiplicities (Actar 2022) online on 8 June, 13.00 – 14.30 (BST). Do join us to celebrate the publication of the book.
At the launch, Lindsay Bremner, Christina Geros, Harshavardhan Bhat, Anthony Powis and John Cook will be joined by Edd Wall, Alfredo Ramirez, Karen Coelho, Pamila Gupta and Jonathan Cane to discuss the book and its methods.
To attend, register using the Eventbrite.
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.
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.
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.
When: Wednesday, 9th of June 2021, 16:00-18:00 (BST)
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 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).
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
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
When: Thursday, 21st of March 2019, 16:00 – Friday, 22nd of March 2019, 18:00
Where: Room M416, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS
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).
The event programme will be released shortly.
To book tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/monsoon-other-grounds-symposium-tickets-53177045976
When: Wednesday 13th of March 2019, 6pm – 9pm (Talk Starts at 6.30pm)
Where: University of Westminster, School of Architecture & Cities, Room 416, 4th Floor, Marylebone Campus, London NW1 5LS (near Baker Street Station)
Monsoon Assemblages has teamed up with the Friends of Sri Lanka to celebrate the work of Geoffrey Bawa.
Bawa (1919 – 2003) is regarded as one of the most in infuential Asian architects of his generation and a pioneer of a style that has become known as “Tropical Modernism”. We hope that staff and students in the School of Architecture + Cities will join us.
Booking is via Eventbrite at https://geoffreybawa. eventbrite.co.uk for a small cost, but there are some FREE places for staff and students at the School of Architecture + Cities. We ask that you kindly email Chamali Fernando at the Friends of Sri Lanka Association Chamali.FOSLA@gmail.com to have your name placed on the guest list.
At the event, architect Wendy de Silva and writer David Robson will look back on the life and work of Sri Lankan master architect Geoffrey Bawa. Both Wendy and David knew Geoffrey Bawa personally and will remember him with professional pride, personal anecdotes and joy. The evening will also incorporate the launch of David’s latest book: Bawa Staircases.
2019 marks the centenary of the birth of Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa. Bawa was born in Colombo in 1919 to parents of mixed Sri Lankan and European descent. He studied English at Cambridge and Law in London during the Second World War and then worked brie y as a lawyer in Colombo. In 1948, he bought an abandoned rubber estate near Bentota and set out to transform it into a Sri Lankan evocation of a classical European garden. It was this project that inspired him to become an architect. Returning to London, he qualified as an architect at the Architectural Association and, in 1957, became a partner in the Colombo practice of Edwards, Reid & Begg. He then embarked on a forty-year career in architecture, during which he created such masterpieces as the Bentota Beach Hotel, the Sri Lankan Parliament at Kotte, the Ruhunu University Campus and the Kandalama Hotel near Dambulla. Bawa’s career ended in 1998 when he was felled by a stroke and he eventually died in 2003. In 2001, he received the Aga Khan’s Award for a Lifetime’s Achievement in Architecture.
David Robson is a Professor of Architecture and must be the world’s leader in Bawa studies. From 2002, with the publication of his Geoffrey Bawa: the complete works to 2018 and the publication of Bawa Staircases, David has written four major books on Bawa, with more on his associates. He is the holder of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust Award for Lifetime Achievement and he has much to tell us. Copies of Bawa Staircases and other David Robson books will be available to purchase on the night.
Wendy de Silva is an award-winning architect who practices in London at the IBI Group. During the early 1980s, Wendy worked with Bawa on the design of the Ruhunu University Campus. Wendy is also one half of the Chance de Silva practice in London, a practice set up to explore the possibilities of architecture in interaction with other participants: artists, designers, musicians (and who can forget Laki Senanayake’s divine copper balustrade winding its way round the central staircase of Bawa’s Lighthouse Hotel at Galle; the elegant inhabitants of Sri Lanka grappling with occidental invaders, a figure playing a pipe at the very top – oriental calm in the face of violence – nor, amongst many such instances, the same artist’s delicious trees drawn through several storeys of the Triton Hotel at Ahungalla).
Lindsay Bremner & Chamali Fernando
Monsoon Assemblages & The Friends of Sri Lanka Association
l.bremner@westminster.ac.uk Chamali.FOSLA@gmail.com
Featured image: Geoffrey Bawa, Steel Corporation Offices and Housing, 1966–1969
When: 13:00-14:00, Thursday, 22nd of November
Where: Erskine Room (M523), 5th Floor, Marylebone Campus
Lindsay Bremner is Professor of Architecture at the School of Architecture + Cities and Principal Investigator on the ERC-funded Monsoon Assemblages project.
The Expanded Territories Research Group in the Department of Architecture has started a reading group, which will meet at 17.30 on the first Tuesday of every month in the Monsoon Assemblages Project Office, Room M330, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS.
We will read one agreed book or essay per month related to the anthropocene, more-than-human ontologies, climate change or any other topics the group puts forward, and discuss it in relation to architecture, landscape, art and design.
All are welcome – staff, students, friends, even if you are not a member of Expanded Territories or have done no prior reading in these areas. All we ask is that you read the book agreed each month!
The inaugural reading will be:
Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt (eds.)
Introduced by Corinna Dean and Victoria Watson
When: Tuesday 2nd May 2018, 17.30
Where: Room M330, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS
Accompanied by wine and nibbles
About Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
Living on a damaged planet challenges who we are and where we live. As human-induced environmental change threatens multispecies live-ability, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet puts forward a bold proposal: entangled histories, situated narratives, and thick descriptions offer urgent “arts of living.” Included are essays by scholars in anthropology, ecology, science studies, art, literature, and bioinformatics who posit critical and creative tools for collaborative survival in a more-than-human Anthropocene.
The book is available on Amazon or in other bookstores or downloadable chapter by chapter here: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/52400
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