AA SCHOOL AUTUMN PUBLIC PROGRAMME SEPTEMBER — DECEMBER 2011 All events take place at 6pm in the Lecture Hall unless otherwise stated
12–16.9.11
30.9.11
Narrative Show Exposition
EXHIBITION OPENINGS
Bedford Press & Eastside Projects 32 Bedford Square, 10am–6pm daily
23 & 24.9.11
AAIS Exquisite Corpse Eric Owen Moss in conversation with Brett Steele 7.12.11
François Dallegret at home in his bath. Photo Shunk-Kender GOD & CO exhibition opening 4.11.11
Rear Second Presentation Space 23.9 Open 6.30pm, performance 7pm 24.9 Performances 6pm & 8pm Exquisite Corpse is a dialogue between architecture, dance, music, design, film, photography, fashion and art that challenges both the architect’s static structure and the dancer’s body in movement. Each performance offers a unique multi-sensory experience, since the programme eschews rehearsal in the traditional sense in favour of establishing networks between interconnected creative activities. Performing and visual arts come together in thrilling tension in an exploration of interdisciplinary practice where every element has been created in situ. The event is the result of a collaboration between the AA Interprofessional Studio (AAIS), run by Theo Lorenz and Tanja Siems, and dance professionals ‘New Movement Collective’, music producers ‘The Boilerhouse Boys’ and the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. Exquisite Corpse is the third and final event in a series of works-in-progress generated and performed by the AAIS. It has evolved from two critically acclaimed events in Madrid and Cologne.
6.30pm Exhibitions run 26 September – 26 October
51N4E: Double or Nothing AA Gallery Double or Nothing presents the architectural and spatial projects of the Brusselsbased practice 51N4E. Curated by French architectural critic Dominique Boudet, the show presents a selection of recent projects from the large-scale Skanderbeg Square in Tirana, Albania – which is bigger even than Red Square in Moscow and twice the size of St Peter’s Square in Rome – to the intimate domestic scale of Arteconomy, a Belgian farmhouse wrapped with high steel walls and focused around a 3 x 3m daybed composed of soft weave, colourful woollen knit tubes. Double or Nothing aims to challenge the visitor to look beyond architecture’s surface conventions and their representation. The accompanying AA Publication is available to purchase.
AA Prizes Front Members’ Room
AA Honours AA Bar
Joel Newman Tracer Fire Back Members’ Room
1.10.11
AA Members’ Event: Exhibition Talk 11am AA Gallery An informal conversation between Double or Nothing curator Dominique Boudet and 51N4E architects Peter Swinnen and Freek Persyn.
4.10.11
Freek Persyn: Double or Nothing Evening Lecture To accompany the Double or Nothing exhibition, Freek Persyn will give a lecture focusing on five topics that highlight aspects of the work of 51N4E. This will be done using elements on show at the AA, intertwined with an in-depth explanation of some recent projects and more general reflections on the ambitions of 51N4E. Freek Persyn graduated from the HAISL in Brussels, after spending one academic year in Ireland at the Dublin Institute of Technology. Very soon after graduating he established the practice
of 51N4E, together with Peter Swinnen and Johan Anrys, and combined his partnership with freelance work for Xaveer de Geyter Architects until 2003, one year before 51N4E was awarded the Rotterdam Maaskant Award for Young Architects. Parallel to his professional activities at 51N4E, he has been assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Gent, and has been visiting critic and studio master at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. He is currently visiting professor at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio.
Conference participants: Academic Partners – Alan Dempsey, Brett Steele (AA), Ila Berman (CCA), Jonathan Soloman/Tom Verebes (University of Hong Kong), Yufang Zhou (CAFA), Jane Burry (RMIT); Industry Consultants – Wolf Mangelsdorf (Buro Happold), David Glover/Ed Clarke (Arup), Benjamin Koren (1:One), Fabian Scheuer (Design to Production); Industry Partners – Michael Riefer (Frener + Riefer), Wolfgang Rieder (Rieder Concrete), Anna Winstanley (Laing O’Rourke/Explore Precast), Bill Zahner/Gary Davies (Zahner Metals)
6.10.11
Nicholas Pozner Prize 2011
X-Change / Independents’ Group: Conference 01 10am This inaugural international meeting of the Independents’ Group will launch a research platform for interdisciplinary exchange and collaboration among five of the world’s leading independent architecture schools, advanced manufacturing partners and technical, cultural and media organisations. Our aim: to undertake advanced project-based research and disseminate its collective work to a wide audience through exhibitions and publications. The one-day public conference will address the current divisions between academia and practice, between design culture and industry, and within sectors of the building industry itself. Through presentations using project-based examples, the conference will examine how developments in communications and manufacturing technologies offer new opportunities for schools and practices to overcome these divisions.
6.30pm Front Members’ Room An event to announce the recipient of the Nicholas Pozner Prize, awarded annually for the ‘Single Best Drawing’ at the AA. The prize is a tribute to the talent and promise Nicholas Pozner showed in the AA Diploma School, as reflected in dedication and impressive precision and beauty of his drawings. At the end of each academic year, drawings are nominated from across the undergraduate school, with a final shortlist drawn up by a jury. The award seeks not only to identify some of the best graphic work produced at the AA each year but also to inspire future years at the school as we continue to explore new techniques and modes of representation in relation to design work.
11.10.11
Tacita Dean in Conversation with Marina Warner Evening Lecture Introduced and moderated by Mark Cousins The AA is delighted to host this event on the day Tacita Dean’s commission for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall (as part of the Unilever Series) opens to the public. Tacita Dean, a British artist now based in Berlin, is best known for her use of film. She will discuss her work with Marina Warner, novelist, short-story writer and historian. Known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth Warner is currently Professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex. Their conversation will be moderated by Mark Cousins.
13.10.11
The AA Foster + Partners Prize 2011 Exhibition and reception 6.30pm Foster + Partners Studio The Foster Prize is awarded annually to the AA Fifth Year Diploma student whose portfolio best addresses the themes of sustainability and infrastructure. The essential aims of this new prize are to forge links between Foster + Partners and the AA and
to encourage students to address themes that are of increasing relevance to architecture and contemporary architectural discourse more globally.
14.10.11
Krzysztof Wodiczko: War, Conflict & Art – Projections, Instrumentations, Designs Evening Lecture Krzysztof Wodiczko will present public projects addressing the existential and political issues of memory, conflict and war, including his Hiroshima Projection, Tijuana Projection, War Veteran Vehicle (in Denver, Liverpool, Warsaw) and, most recently, his proposal for the Arc de Triomphe: World Institute for the Abolition of War in Paris. Wodiczko is renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments around the world – projections that involve the active participation of marginalised and estranged city residents. Simultaneously, he has worked with the homeless, with immigrants and with war veterans to developed a series of nomadic instruments and survival/communication vehicles. Wodiczko was awarded the Hiroshima Prize in 1998. In 2009 he represented Poland in the Venice Biennale. A comprehensive monograph of his work was published this year by Black Dog, London.
20.10.11
22 & 23.10.11
AA Global Conversations
The Ideas Market: AA First Year & the Bloomsbury Festival
Evening Roundtable Lecture with Visiting School directors, staff and students Global Conversations will traverse the globe in 60 minutes. We’ll start in Chernobyl and end in Chile, showing a slice of the past, present and forthcoming AA Visiting Schools. From Brazil to Bogota, from Tokyo to Paris, from the AA’s home-based Summer School and dLab to the woods of Hooke Park and SummerMake and MakeLab, we’ll glimpse the extraordinary work, events and discussions that have been happening while the rest of us have been sleeping. In three minutes, and in their own particular way, each programme director will present what they’ve been up to and what they’ve been thinking. Whether you want to see a cosmology of work from 2011 or what’s going to happen in 2012 why not take 60 minutes to immerse yourself in the Visiting Schools that make up our world view.
21.10.11
Alan Colquhoun & his Writings: A Celebration Symposium, 2pm Lecture Hall With contributions from Mary McLeod, Bob Maxwell, Françoise Fromonot, Kenneth Frampton, Jacques Gubler and Stanislaus von Moos.
Bedford Square As part of the Bloomsbury Festival, the AA will host a series of market-stall installations in Bedford Square dedicated to exploring critical conversations related to the relations between Art, Architecture and Medicine – particularly as practised in Bloomsbury from the mid-twentieth century up to the present time.
22.10.11
AIA UK Charrette 9am Lecture Hall This annual event is a lively opportunity for students to ‘limber up’ early in the academic year, as well as for recent graduates to revisit the experiences of the one-day design exercise. Participants will design collaboratively in teams of around six to eight students, mentored by a seasoned practising architect or interior architect. To heighten a fun sense of competition, participants are encouraged to work as a team ‘representing’ their school or practice – individuals will be married up with a team on the day. At the end of the afternoon, around 5pm, team submissions will be discussed publicly, and prizes will be awarded to the
three most compelling schemes. This year’s charrette challenges students to explore how architectural form can create both expressive and rich interior spaces which heighten one’s understanding of an overall concept or idea. The chairman of the jury this year will be Paul Finch OBE. Fee £10 per student, which includes lunch, refreshments and reprographic services. For further details and registration please contact Fiona Mckay: chapterexecutive@aiauk.org
27.10.11
Jason Griffiths: Manifest Destiny Evening Lecture In Manifest Destiny Jason Griffiths describes America’s new suburban homes in terms of their anomalies and abject beauty. His interest is in the ‘architecture of indifference’ that follows in the wake of a flawed attempt at perfection. While suburbia is often described as a quintessentially excessive place, it also carries a strange and compelling emptiness. This lecture accompanies the launch of an AA publication which offers an impressionistic account – through 58 chapter types – of a ‘compromised arcadia’ through photographs and writing based on hundreds of visits to the US suburbs over the last eight years. Jason Griffiths is a partner in Gino Griffiths Architects and works in the American Southwest. His practice is based on a multidisciplinary approach to architecture working through competitions, buildings, furniture, writing and photography. He has won numerous international awards and has exhibited and published widely including in AA Files, Architecture, JA, JAE and The Sunday Times.
28.10.11
31.10.11
1.11.11
Thrilling Wonder Stories 3
FAT in Conversation with Charles Jencks
Clara Oloriz Sanjuan & Douglas Spencer: Urban Prototypes
Symposium, 12pm Lecture Hall With Liam Young (Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today) Geoff Manaugh (BLDGBLOG) We have always regaled ourselves with speculative stories of a day yet to come. In these polemic visions we furnish the fictional spaces of tomorrow with objects and ideas that at the same time chronicle the contradictions, inconsistencies, flaws and frailties of the everyday. Slipping suggestively between the real and the imagined these narratives offer a distanced viewpoint from which to survey the consequences of various social, environmental and technological scenarios. Thrilling Wonder Stories chronicles such tales in a sci-fi storytelling jam with musical interludes, live demonstrations and illustrious speakers from the fields of science, art and technology presenting their visions of the near future. Join our ensemble of mad scientists, literary astronauts, design mystics, graphic cowboys, mavericks, visionaries and luminaries for an evening of wondrous possibilities and dark cautionary tales.
31.10.11 – 4.11.11
OPEN WEEK
Evening Lecture A new issue of AD magazine, Radical Post-Modernism, marks the resurgence of a critical architecture that engages in a far-reaching way with issues of taste, space, character and ornament. Bridging high and low cultures, it immerses itself in the age of information, embracing meaning and communication, getting embroiled in the dirty politics of taste by drawing ideas from beyond the narrow confines of architecture. It is a multi-dimensional, amorphous category, heavily influenced by contemporary art, cultural theory, modern literature and everyday life. Guest-edited by Charles Jencks and FAT (Sean Griffiths, Charles Holland and Sam Jacob), this issue of AD demonstrates how, in the age of late capitalism, Radical Post-Modernism can provide an architecture of resistance and contemporary relevance. Followed by celebratory drinks.
Momus: Discursive Circus Maximus Concert and Conversation Curated by Shumon Basar 8pm New Soft Room (NSR) Launch Event
Research Cluster Launch Event 1pm Lecture Hall
Stan Allen: Landform Building Evening Lecture Green roofs, artificial mountains and geological forms; buildings you walk on or over; networks of ramps and warped surfaces; buildings that carve into the ground or landscapes lifted high into the air – all these are commonplace in architecture today. New technologies, new design techniques and a demand for enhanced environmental performance have provoked a rethinking of architecture’s traditional relationship to the ground. Some of today’s most innovative buildings no longer occupy a given site but instead construct the site itself. Landform Building examines the many manifestations of landscape and ecology in contemporary architectural practice – not as a cross-disciplinary phenomenon (architects working in the landscape) but as new design techniques, new formal strategies and technical problems within architecture.
Stan Allen is an architect working in New York and dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton University. He holds degrees from Brown University, the Cooper Union and Princeton. He has taught at Harvard, Columbia and Princeton, and his architectural firm SAA/Stan Allen Architect has realised buildings and urban projects in the United States, South America and Asia. His most recent book is Landform Building: Architecture’s New Terrain, published by Lars Müller in 2011.
2.11.11
Sam Jacob & Ines Weizman: Architectural Doppelgangers Research Cluster Launch Event 3pm Lecture Hall
AA Archives Opening Party 5pm AA Archives, 32 Bedford Square Members and students are invited for drinks to celebrate the re-opening of the AA Archives in its new home in No 32 Bedford Square. Now with a dedicated reading room and vastly improved facilities and storage, the AA Archives operates as an open learning resource for students, AA members and other researchers. It aims to document the administrative and educational history of the AA and holds an extensive collection of architectural
drawings, posters, models, medals and AA-related ephemera, together with student and Association records dating back to the 1840s.
3.11.11
Hooke Park Conversation 2pm Lecture Hall Hosted by the MArch Design & Make programme, the Hooke Park Session will provide an update on activities at Hooke Park (the AA’s woodland facility in Dorset) and a forum for input into the upcoming projects. The new students based at Hooke will frame a series of questions for open discussion to inform their brief and ambitions for the next buildings that they will design and construct. Open to all AA students and members with an interest in Hooke Park, and with invitees including architects and consultants who have been, or are, involved at the site, the aim is to revisit the Strategic Plan developed in 2007 and to collectively reinforce (or reformulate) the AA’s ambitions for this new phase of activity.
Grahame Shane Evening Lecture
4.11.11
Open Jury All day
4.11.11
EXHIBITION OPENINGS 6.30pm Exhibitions run 5–14 December
God & Co: François Dallegret Beyond the Bubble AA Gallery
Archizines Front Members’ Room
5.11.11
AA Members’ Event: Exhibition Talk 11.30, AA Gallery An informal conversation and exhibition tour in the AA Gallery with François Dallegret and the exhibition curators and editors of the accompanying catalogue: Alessandra Ponte (University of Montreal), Laurent Stalder (ETH, Zurich) and Thomas Weaver (AA). The talk will lead viewers
not only through the panoply of Dallegret’s projects and career, but through the curatorial and editorial ideas and decisions that informed the book and exhibition. Members are welcome and encouraged to ask questions of their own.
Jeremy Rifkin is a senior lecturer at the Wharton School’s Executive Education Programme at the University of Pennsylvania, where he instructs CEOs and corporate management on new trends in science, technology, the economy and society. He is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, DC.
7.11.11
Foundation & First Year Open Day Details from AA Admissions Office.
Jeremy Rifkin: The Third Industrial Revolution Evening Lecture In collaboration with Enric Ruiz Geli & Diploma Unit 18 students ‘I think we need to rethink economic policies and make thermodynamics the basis of economic theory. The price of energy is embedded in every product we make. At the same time, the effects of climate change are already eroding economies in many parts of the world as extreme weather events destroy ecosystems and agricultural infrastructure. The Third Industrial Revolution will be driven in part by the need to mitigate the entropic impact of the first two industrial revolutions.’ Jeremy Rifkin, in an interview with the New Scientist.
8.11.11
Alessandra Ponte: The Map & the Territory Evening Lecture The lecture is organised around a series of statements that articulate contradictory accounts of the relationship between maps and territories. The entry point is the title of a novel by Michel Houellebecq, La carte et le territoire (2010). Commentators on Houellebecq’s controversial narrative, in which an artist achieves fame thanks to huge photographic reproductions of fragments of Michelin road maps, have remarked upon the obvious allusion to Alfred Korzybski’s dictum ‘the map is not the territory’. Korzybski, founder of the discipline of General Semantic (which acquired popularity in architectural circles immediately after WWII), publicly formulated the statement for the first time in 1931 to summarise the central thesis of his philosophy: namely, that the concept of a thing or our reaction to a thing are not the thing itself. In the case of maps and territories, according to Korzybski, models of the real are mistaken for the real itself. Korzybski’s propositions were revisited by anthropologist-cyberneticist Gregory Bateson in ‘Form, Substance, and Difference’, an essay published in Steps to an Ecology of the Mind (1972).
In this text, after emphasising the validity of Korzybski statement, Bateson affirms: ‘We know the territory does not get onto the map … What gets onto the map, in fact, is difference, be it a difference in altitude, a difference in vegetation, a difference in population structure, difference in surface or whatever … But what is a difference? A difference is a very peculiar and obscure concept. It is certainly not a thing or an event…’ The lecture will attempt to map such puzzling and thorny issues.
10.11.11
Owen Hatherley: Pulp’s ‘Uncommon’ People Evening Lecture, 6pm New Soft Room In Uncommon (Zero Books), author and fan Owen Hatherley argues that the Sheffield pop group Pulp ‘should be taken very seriously indeed’. Here, in conversation with Shumon Basar and with the aid of some of Pulp’s finest songs, Hatherley will explore the torrid and tender relationships between sex, class and the city of Sheffield in the 90s. Owen Hatherley blogs on architecture, urbanism, politics, design, music and critical theory at Sit Down Man, You’re a Bloody Tragedy (nastybrutalistandshort. blogspot.com). He is a regular contributor to The Guardian, Icon and Frieze, and is the author of two highly acclaimed books, Militant Modernism (Zero Books) and A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (Verso).
11.11.11
Mark Cousins: The Poetics of Cliché Evening Lecture Series 5pm Lecture Hall This series will continue on the following dates: 18 & 25 November, 2 & 9 December This lecture course will examine the power of formulations in language or in images which would normally be described as cliché. It asks why it is nonetheless that they exercise such a continuing power over us and why we respond to them. Various concepts of the ‘Imaginary’ will be explored, together with its use to explain certain mechanisms in that area called everyday life.
11.11.11
Benjamin Koren: 1:One | Computational Geometry Evening Lecture, 6.30pm Lecture Hall The lecture will feature recent projects by the consultancy 1:One | Computational Geometry, including its contributions to Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonic Hamburg, Jean Nouvel’s Philharmonie de Paris and the Louvre Dome in Abu Dhabi. 1:One | Computational Geometry, based
in Frankfurt am Main, specialises in delivering custom computational solutions for complex design projects at all scales. By utilising parametric techniques for non-standard geometries, and developing automation and optimisation algorithms that are fully integrated into the computeraided fabrication process, projects can be realised more quickly, with greater precision and at a reduced cost. Benjamin Samuel Koren was born in 1981 in Frankfurt, Germany and grew up in Miami, Florida. He studied architecture, film and music at the University of Miami and at the AA. Before founding 1:One | Computational Geometry in 2009 he worked at the Advanced Geometry Unit at Arup and for Herzog & de Meuron.
15.11.11
SHoP Architects: Out of Practice Evening Lecture SHoP Architects will present ‘Out of Practice’, a look at the office’s current projects with a focus on how the firm seeks to reinvent the business model of architectural practice. Gregg Pasquarelli co-founded SHoP Architects in 1997 and has lectured, exhibited and published internationally. He was named the Saarinen Professor of Architecture at Yale University in 2006 and served as the Shure Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia during 2003. Pasquarelli also serves on the board of directors for the Architectural League of New York and is a Young Leader’s Fellow of the National Committee on United States-China Relations.
16.11.11
John Frazer: Intentionality – The Coding of a Design Concept Evening Lecture In a generative or evolutionary design system the fundamental intention must be seeded and explicitly coded even if the final outcome is intended to be unpredictable. Coding design intent in an appropriately flexible manner cannot be achieved by parameterisation or conventional scripting techniques. So how is the genetic language to be written? A powerful and flexible generative engine is also needed to avoid the endless repetition of a restricted structural language. In this lecture John Frazer will articulate the theory and methodology of Evolutionary Digital Design and how it has developed since his first book An Evolutionary Architecture (1995). He will also clearly place the methodology in the context of the social, economic and architectural problems that it sets out to solve.
17.11.11
18.11.11
Turi Munthe / Demotix: Arab Spring & The New News
AA Members’ Event: Building Visit – One New Change
Evening Lecture, New Soft Room
1.45pm
Demotix is a picture and video newswire where the news is ‘supplied by you’. A community of over 25,000 users and 4,500 active photo- and video-journalists in every corner of the globe cover stories as they happen. Demotix acts as an interface between this community and the mainstream press, at a time where international news bureaus are fast disappearing. Founder Turi Munthe will speak to Shumon Basar about the structural challenges facing news media, and in particular, how the Arab Spring has both exposed and embraced these changes. Turi Munthe is CEO and Founder of Demotix. He has been a publisher, editor, political analyst, lecturer, journalist and talking head. He has written for many of the world’s leading English-language newspapers, appeared on CNN, BBC, NBC, al-Jazeera, Asahi and Reuters. He is the author of the Saddam Hussein Reader.
Situated to the east of St Paul’s cathedral, One New Change is a new mixed-use, retail and office development in the City of London. The executive architects Sidell Gibson worked closely with French architect Jean Nouvel on his first major scheme for London. Nicknamed the ‘Stealth building’ after Nouvel revealed that the design was influenced by the form of a Stealth Bomber, One New Change is built using the top-down construction method. It features a largescale geothermal heating and cooling system, flexible floor plates allowing for modern office technology and demonstrates a pioneering fritting technique. Tour led by SGA Partner Sanya Tomic.
18.11.11
EXHIBITION OPENING Net Works AA Bar and venues around the school Open 19 November to 14 December 2011 A key objective of Networks is to frame and better understand the early modern foundations on which much of current architectural experimentation lies, as a means to
reassess the social, cultural and political implications of architectural culture in the early twenty-first century. The exhibition will display the work of contemporary young offices and schools whose projects explore the potential of connective design technologies, distributed material structures, or diffused operational/managerial working approaches in architecture. Contributors to the exhibition include Atelier d’Architecture Autogerée, AADRL, AA Visiting School, Ball-Nogues, Misuk Cho, Sou Fujimoto, Vicente Guallart, Exyzt, Theo Jansen, Kram/Weisshaar, Achim Menges, Supersudaca, Stalker, Studio-X Global Network Initiative, School of Missing Studies and Talca School of Architecture. The accompanying monograph will include these examples alongside examples selected from the twentiethcentury history of networks in architectural practice and culture. Networks is the second volume of a planned trilogy by Brett Steele and Francisco Gonzalez de Canales exploring the changing modern conditions of architectural production in relation to emerging contemporary technologies and radical experimentation.
production, they are far more than prototypes; each directly addresses human occupation by enhancing and celebrating social interaction through sensation, spectacle and physical engagement.’ Benjamin Ball will discuss the work of Ball Nogues Studio, an integrated design and fabrication practice operating in the territory between architecture, art and industrial design. Essential to each of their projects is the ‘design’ of the production process itself. They devise proprietary systems of construction, create new fabrication devices, develop custom digital tools and invent materials with the aim of expanding the potential of the physically constructed world. Ball Nogues have received numerous honours including three American Institute of Architects Design Awards, United States Artists Target Fellowships and a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. They are also one of the Architectural League of New York’s Emerging Voices of 2011.
24.11.11 22.11.11
Benjamin Ball: Fast Cheap & In Control Evening Lecture ‘Speculation and execution are inexorably linked in our work; each project demands that we maintain tight control over design and production. As young practitioners, this requires a do-it-yourself ethos. Consequently, we have “designed” our career so we can exploit opportunities to build that are outside the constraints of the conventional architectural milieu. Although our projects are experimental with respect to
Mario Carpo: Digital Style Evening Lecture Drawing on his recently published monograph, The Alphabet and the Algorithm (MIT Press, 2011), Mario Carpo will discuss the issue of digital agency and how new forms of collaborative making affect the making of form and the visual ‘style’ of digitally designed objects. Mario Carpo is the Vincent Scully Visiting Professor of Architectural History at the Yale School of Architecture, and a professor at Georgia Tech. He is the author of Architecture in the Age of Printing (2001), The Alphabet and the Algorithm (2011), and other books on early modern and contemporary architectural theory.
25–27.11.11
AA Members’ Event: Venice Biennale A last chance to visit the 54th International Art Exhibition, which closes on 27 November. Directed by Bice Curiger, ILLUMInations features 83 artists from all over the world including Cindy Sherman, Christian Marklay, Ryan Gander and Martin Creed.
29.11.11
Lars Spuybroek: The Sympathy of Things – Ruskin & the Ecology of Design Evening Lecture Lars Spuybroek will talk about his recently published book on John Ruskin, proposing that Ruskin’s notion of the Gothic is a much better point of reference for digital architecture than Deleuze’s Baroque Fold. He will advocate a return to Ruskin’s ‘vital’ beauty, while steering away from the Scrutonian call for harmony and ‘typical’ beauty. The lecture will be followed by a discussion with architecture critic Charles Jencks. Lars Spuybroek is an architect/ artist-pioneer of digital design. He has been a Professor of Architecture since 2001,
and for the last five years also the Distinguished Ventulett Chair of Architectural Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Since 2004 he published five books on digital design, including NOX: Machining Architecture, Textile Tectonics and, most recently, The Sympathy of Things: Ruskin and the Ecology of Design.
30.11.11
North Evening Lecture A swathe of new constructions – infrastructures, networks, harbours, deep sea drilling platforms, airports, mining sites, new cities – is reshaping the shifting grounds of the higher latitudes as the ice recedes. Against this backdrop, the seminar convenes architects, urbanists, artists, thinkers and practitioners to debate the new circulations, transformations and aspirations as a potential for a post-colonial, post-western and contemporary Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions. Organised by Territorial Agency.
to history and philosophy. This development is occurring despite the fact the concept of landscape was once effectively dismissed, by an influential geographical theorist, as being of ‘little or no value as a technical or scientific term’ in geography. It will be argued that the contemporary analytical power of landscape derives in important measure from the timely ability of David Lowenthal to turn the critique of landscape on end. He did this by transforming the very contradictions embodied by landscape which made it a liability as technical or scientific term, into a phenomenon for epistemological inquiry. David Lowenthal born 1923; Emeritus Professor UCL Geography; colleague of Denis Cosgrove and Part Director of Landscape Research Group.
5.12.11
Fourth Year Open Evening 6.12.11
1.12.11
David Lowenthal: Lowenthal & Landscape Evening Lecture The concept of landscape is enjoying a period of scholarly development in contemporary geography that has spread to, and enriched, disciplines ranging from anthropology, archaeology and sociology,
John Winter
directions from his long-time friend and fellow East Anglian, Reyner Banham. Since setting up on his own he has designed a series of houses, the most famous of which is his own Cor-ten home in Highgate.
7.12.11
Eric Owen Moss Something to read? Something you need? Something to rent? Something that’s bent?
Annual DOCOMOMO Lecture
In Conversation with Brett Steele 1pm Lecture Hall
The architect John Winter (1930–) has been practising for over 60 years. His career spans a remarkable spectrum of twentieth-century architecture. First apprenticed to an arts and crafts-trained architect in Norwich, he then graduated from the AA, and after national service went to America, studying at Yale with Louis Kahn before moving to San Francisco, where he worked at SOM with Myron Goldsmith during the day and with Charles Eames in the evenings. Returning to England, he joined the office of Hungarian architect Ernö Goldfinger, from whom he learnt about the European modernist tradition – buildings he then visited with the help of
Revolution ends when the clientele imagines they are joining a revolution. Over the last 37 years Eric Owen Moss Architects (EOMA) has built a wide array of awardwinning buildings, and has helped shape the discourse of architecture internationally. That discussion continues to manifest itself in the continuing production of innovative structures, and in lectures, exhibitions, publishing and teaching around the world. Moss has recently lectured in Dubai, Belgrade, Vienna, Beijing and Paris. Recent work includes projects in Italy, China, Serbia and India. Eric Owen Moss has held teaching positions at major universities around the
world including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. He has also been a long-time professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and has served as its director since 2003. He was honoured as the 2006 AIA/LA Educator of the Year, and is this year’s recipient of the Jencks Award, an annual award, organised by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), given to an architect who has made a major contribution to both the theory and practice of architecture.Â
9.12.11
Net Works Roundtable and Book Launch 6.30pm
A view of everyday life in Drop City. Photo Sam Schmuelick Net Works exhibition opening 18.11.11 Roundtable & book launch 9.12.11
AA Members can access a black and white and /or larger print version of print materials by going to the AA website at www.aaschool.ac.uk. Alternatively, contact the AA Membership Office by email on membership@aaschool.ac.uk or on +44 (0)20 7887 4076. For the audio infoline, please call +44 (0)20 7887 4111. Published by the Architectural Association, 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES. T +44 (0)20 7887 4000 F +44 (0)20 7414 0782. Produced and edited by AA Print Studio. Design: Wayne Daly, Art Direction: Zak Kyes. Printed by APG / Blue Printing. Architectural Association (Inc.), Registered Charity No. 311083. Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in England No. 171402. Registered Office as above.
Turi Munthe /Demotix: Arab Spring & the New News 17.11.11 Photo Steve Crisp
Architectural Association School of Architecture 4.10.11 Freek Persyn 6pm Lecture Hall 6.10.11 X-Change / Independents’ Group: Conference 01, 10am Lecture Hall Nicholas Pozner Prize 2011 6.30pm Front Members’ Room 11.10.11 Tacita Dean in conversation with Marina Warner 6pm Lecture Hall 13.10.11 AA Foster + Partners Prize ‘11 6.30pm Foster + Partners Studio 14.10.11 Krzysztof Wodiczko 6pm Lecture Hall 20.10.11 AA Global Conversations 6pm Lecture Hall
1.11.11 Clara Oloriz Sanjuan & Douglas Spencer 1pm Lecture Hall
18.11.11 Mark Cousins 5pm Lecture Hall
Stan Allen 6pm Lecture Hall
22.11.11 Benjamin Ball 6pm Lecture Hall
2.11.11 Sam Jacob & Ines Weizman 3pm Lecture Hall
24.11.11 Mario Carpo 6pm Lecture Hall
AA Archives Opening Party 5pm 32 Bedford Square
25.11.11 Mark Cousins 5pm Lecture Hall
3.11.11 Hooke Park Conversation 2pm Lecture Hall Grahame Shane 6pm Lecture Hall 4.11.11 Open Jury 7.11.11 Foundation & First Year Open Day Jeremy Rifkin 6pm Lecture Hall
21.10.11 Alan Colquhoun & his Writings: A Celebration 2pm Lecture Hall
8.11.11 Alessandra Ponte 6pm Lecture Hall
27.10.11 Jason Griffiths 6pm Lecture Hall
10.11.11 Owen Hatherley 6pm New Soft Room
28.10.11 Thrilling Wonder Stories 3 12pm Lecture Hall
11.11.11 Mark Cousins 5pm Lecture Hall
31.10.11 FAT in conversation with Charles Jencks 6pm Lecture Hall
Benjamin Koren 6.30pm Lecture Hall
Momus 8pm New Soft Room
Autumn Public Programme 2011
15.11.11 SHoP Architects 6pm Lecture Hall 16.11.11 John Frazer 6pm Lecture Hall 17.11.11 Turi Munthe/Demotix 6pm New Soft Room
29.11.11 Lars Spuybroek 6pm Lecture Hall 30.11.11 North 6pm Lecture Hall 1.12.11 David Lowenthal 6pm Lecture Hall 2.12.11 Mark Cousins 5pm Lecture Hall 5.12.11 Fourth Year Open Evening 6.12.11 John Winter 6pm Lecture Hall 7.12.11 Eric Owen Moss in conversation with Brett Steele 1pm Lecture Hall 9.12.11 Mark Cousins 5pm Lecture Hall 9.12.11 Net Works Roundtable & Book Launch 6.30pm
AA Public Programme sponsored by