School of Architecture + Cities 2023 Equity Forum Symposium: “Pursuing Urban Equity” | Thursday, June 22 at 14:00 (BST) | MG14, Marylebone Campus, University of Westminster

When: Thursday, 22nd of June at 2pm (BST)

Where: MG14, University of Westminster Marylebone Campus, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS

How does a school of architecture + cities pursue school-wide equity? How are questions of equity emerging in student projects, and how could these projects inform school strategies? What can practitioner perspectives offer the way in which a school shapes its approach?

This inaugural symposium will bring together academics, students, and practitioners to discuss projects and exchange ideas on the notion of equity for built environment disciplines. The symposium will open with an introductory talk on the tactics and challenges of introducing a ‘cultural infrastructure’ to support the pursuit of equity in the School. This will be followed by two panels in succession: a practitioner panel, and a student panel. Members of each panel will present a short talk on one project relating to equity, followed by a panel discussion and Q&A.

The projects and their themes will be wide-ranging, but all linked by a focus on the cultural approaches, forms of intelligence, and skills required to move towards greater equity. The symposium will conclude with the formal launch of ‘Urban Equity’, an Open Access online resource, followed by refreshments and networking.

Please book tickets here.

Programme

14.00 Welcome: Prof. Harry Charrington, Head, School of Architecture + Cities

14.10 Introduction – ‘Cultural Infrastructure’: Lucy Bambury (School EDI Student Champion) and Samir Pandya (School EDI Lead)

14.30 Panel 1 Short TalksPractitioner Perspectives (Chair: Alastair Blyth, Assistant Head of School)

14:30 Shaun Ihejetoh (Director, West Port Architects): V&A Africa Fashion – Equity in Design

14.45 Mei-Yee Man Oram (Associate Director, Arup): Designing inclusive spaces

15.00 Jas Bhalla (Principal, Jas Bhalla Architects): From the ground up – delivering transformative renewal across London’s high streets

15.15 Respondent – Prof. Pippa Catterall (School of Humanities)

15.20 Panel Discussion

15.45 Q&A

16.00 BREAK

16.15 Panel 2 Short Talks: Student Perspectives (Chair: Lucy Bambury)

16.15 Nishika Diyabalanage (MA Interior Architecture): The New Women of Oxford Street

16.30 Dawn Rahman (Active Travel Academy PhD student): Mad or Magnificent? Mothers who cycle with their children

16.45 Riane Oukili (MArch/RIBA Part 2):  The Archaeological Garden: Towards a decolonial archaeology

17.00 Respondent – (Wilfred Achille, RIBA Part 3 Co-Course Leader)

17.05 Panel Discussion

17.30 Q&A

18.00 Concluding comments, and formal launch of ‘Urban Equity’ (Open Access EDI online resource)

18.30 Refreshments and networking

UoW + Docomomo UK: Lyons Israel Ellis Gray “A visit to Cavendish Campus hosted by Tony Fretton” | Friday, October 7 at 18:30 (BST)

When: Friday, 7th of October at 6.30pm

Where: Cavendish Campus, University of Westminster, 115 New Cavendish St, London W1B 2HW

To book tickets please go here.

Please join us for an event organised jointly with Docomomo UK:

We are celebrating the University’s finest building: 115 New Cavendish Street, and the work of its architects Lyons, Israel, Ellis.

John Ellis, architect and son of the partner Tom Ellis, will bein conversation with Elain Harwood and John Miller.

Lyons, Israel, Ellis, ‘the most important form of architects you never heard of’, were a remarkable firm and employers / mentors of Neave Brown, Alan Colquhoun, Eldred Evans, James Gowan, John Gray, Richard MacCormac, Rick Mather, John Miller, and James Stirling.

Book Launch: Revolution? Architecture and the Anthropocene by Susannah Hagan | Wednesday, March 30 at 18:30 (BST) [Online discussion / Launch]

Where: Online

When: Wednesday, 30th of March 2022 from 6.30pm to 8pm

Eventbrite booking here.

The University of Westminster and Lund Humphries are delighted to celebrate the launch of Revolution? Architecture and the Anthropocene, a new book that asks why architecture has lagged behind the environmental curve for the last fifty years.

Susannah Hagan in conversation with Harry Charrington, University of Westminster; Brian Ford, University of Nottingham; Ricardo de Ostos, NaJa & deOstos and the AA School of Architecture and Lindsay Bremner, University of Westminster.

The online event will take place online on Microsoft Teams, and attendees will automatically receive a joining link upon completion of Eventbrite Registration.

About the Speakers

Susannah Hagan is Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster. Prior to Westminster, she was Head of Research and the Doctoral Programme at the School of Architecture, Royal College of Art. She has published extensively, and has drawn together architectural design, history and theory to examine environmental practice in four books: Taking Shape: A New Contract between Architecture and Nature (2001), Digitalia: architecture and the environmental, the digital and the avant-garde (2008), Ecological Urbanism: the nature of the city (2015), and now Revolution? Architecture and the Anthropocene (2022).

Lindsay Bremner (Chair) is Director of Research at the School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster, and was Principal Investigator of Monsoon Assemblages, a European Research Council-funded project to investigate the impact of changing monsoon climates on four Asian cities. Previously, she was Professor and Chair of Architecture, Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia (2006-11), and Chair of Architecture, University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (1998-2004). Her most recent publication is Monsoon Solidarity: A Global Approach to Climate Justice (2022).

Harry Charrington is an architect and Head of the School of Architecture and Cities at the University of Westminster. He worked for Alvar Aalto & Co. in Helsinki, and later practiced in Newcastle and Bristol. He has taught at the Universities of Newcastle, UWE Bristol and Bath in the UK, and Helsinki and Aalto Universities and Vaasa Institute of Technology in Finland. His research focuses on the histories of modernism and on design practice. These include the exhibition Alvar Aalto: Process & Culture (RIBA Heinz), and his book Alvar Aalto: the Mark of the Hand, co-authored with Vezio Nava, which won the 2012 RIBA President’s Medal for Research.

Brian Ford (RIBA FRSA) is an architect, an environmental design consultant and Emeritus Professor at the University of Nottingham. He was in private practice for over 25 years, including Peake Short & Partners and Short Ford Associates, where he worked on innovative low carbon projects in Europe, USA, India, Australia and China. He initiated a series of multi-partner EU-funded research projects on natural ventilation and passive cooling and was until recently Vice President of the Passive and Low Energy Architecture organisation (PLEA). His most recent book is The Architecture of Natural Cooling (2020, 2nd edition).

Ricardo De Ostos is a director of NaJa & deOstos, a London-based studio developed as a platform for experimental architectural design, before that working for Peter Cook, Future Systems and Foster + Partners. He is a Unit Master at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, director of the AA Madrid Summer School and guest professor at Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. Most recently, he is co-author of the book Scavengers and Other Creatures in Promised Lands (2017).

Book Launch + Webinar: “Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope” | Thursday, June 10 , 2021 at 18:00 (BST)

Please join MArch DS22 tutors and the founders of Palestine Regeneration Team, Senior Lecturers at the UoW, Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari, on the 10th of June 2021 at 6pm (BST) for a webinar and a book launch for Open Gaza: Architectures of hope, co-edited by the late Michael Sorkin and Deen Sharp.

In an attempt to cultivate hope, a group of scholars got together to explore imaginative spatial scenarios to heal the fractured city of Gaza. While we share some of the work, we will also be discussing the wider subjects of Architecture of Care and the Right to the City.

The event hosted by the Head of School of Architecture + Cities, Professor Harry Charrington, is a tribute to Michael Sorkin and a testament to his insistent cry for a right to the city and a spatial justice for all.

The event is part of London Festival of Architecture.

For further details and to register for the event please go to Eventbrite.

London Festival of Architecture 2021 Film Screening: Aalto (Virpi Suutari 2020) + Prof Harry Charrington and Virpi Suutari in conversation | June 2, 2021 18:00-19:00

AALTO is a documentary film journey into the life and work of one of the greatest modern architects Alvar Aalto. The film shares the love story of Alvar and his architect wives Aino and Elissa Aalto. It takes the viewer on a cinematic tour to their creative processes and iconic buildings all over the world. We visit their buildings in Finland, a library in Russia, a student dormitory at MIT, an art collector’s private house near Paris, a pavilion in Venice – and many other unique places.

The film is available to watch 1-7 June. Register on Eventbrite to receive your free streaming link.

See the film trailer using event link.

Director Virpi Suutari and Professor Harry Charrington will discuss the film on 2 June 18-19.

Professor Harry Charrington, Head of School of Architecture + Cities, is also one of the main narrators and consultants in this newly released documentary film.

Tickets/Booking:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/aalto-virpi-suutari-2020-film-screening-tickets-150740666391

The Master’s Banquet _ Friday, September 20, 18:00 at Fabrication Lab, University of Westminster

When: Friday, 20th of September 2019, 18:00

Where: Banqueting Hall, Fabrication Lab, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS

Rhiain Bower wins RIBA President’s Dissertation Medal 2017

Congratulations to Rhiain Bower, our MArch student who won the RIBA President’s Dissertation Medal 2017 for her thesis ‘Baricsio: The Slate Quarrymen’s Barracks in North West Wales’.

Tutored by Professor Harry Charrington, Rhiain used a combination of fieldwork, archival data, newspaper clippings, poetry and local accounts, to write a compelling study of the 19th-century barrack dwellings constructed for workers at a slate quarry in Wales. You can see parts of Rhiain’s dissertation here.

‘The remote architecture was not particularly well-documented at the time, so Bower combined her own visual documentation with accounts gleaned from the time to draw a portrait of the harsh conditions experienced by the quarrymen who lived in the stark barracks from week to week for the opportunity of a salary.’

This is the fourth year in a row that a student from the Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment has won an award in the RIBA President’s Medals. An outstanding achievement!

Habitat: Applying the Lessons of Vernacular Architecture to our Changing Planet – Wednesday 11th October, 18:00-20:00, The Hogg Lecture Theatre, Marylebone Campus, University of Westminster

Please join us for the second session in the series of HABITAT events which are taking place in New York, London, Brussels, Milan, COP23, Bonn, Paris, Abu Dhabi and Novosibirsk, aimed to explore global socio-economic and cultural potentials of technology development and transfer.

The culmination of years of specialist research, HABITAT: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Planet is a once-in-a-generation large format publication. It gathers together an international team of more than one hundred leading experts across a diverse range of disciplines to examine what the traditions of vernacular architecture and its regional craftspeople around the world can teach us about creating a more sustainable future.

The publication has been reviewed in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/19/habitat-vernacular-architecture-changing-planet-sandra-piesik-review 

Speakers:

  • Professor Harry Charrington, Head of Department of Architecture, University of Westminster Moderator
  • Professor Marjan Colletti, Professor of Architecture and Post Digital Practice, The Bartlett School of Architecture
  • Dr Louise Cooke, Building Conservation, The University of York
  • Dr Nasser Golzari, Architect, University of Westminster
  • Lucas Dietrich, Editorial Director of Thames & Hudson
  • Henry Fletcher, Associate Director at BuroHappold Cities Consulting in London
  • Dr John Hemming, Explorer
  • Alexander Maitland, Architect and Sir Wilfred Thesiger Official Biographer
  • Dr Sandra Piesik, General Editor of HABITAT, and Director, Architect of 3 ideas Ltd Convenor
  • Dr Beniamino Polimeni, Architect, De Montfort University Leicester
  • Professor André Singer, President of The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI)

Where: The Hogg Lecture Theatre, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS

When: Wednesday 11th October, 18:00-20:00

RSVP: info@3ideasme.com

Register on the Eventbrite: www.thamesandhudson.com I thamesandhudson.com/events Iwww.westminster.ac.uk I www.3ideasme.com I #HABITAT:Coalition I #HABITAT:London

Purchase book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Habitat-Vernacular-Architecture-Changing-Planet/dp/1419728806

To download full programme: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gtgsz9fzzhd8l7g/AAD6vPZj2cS1Uxt0HvXiGgfaa?dl=0