Lecture by Jonathan Hill 'A Landscape of Architecture, History and Fiction' 18:30, 19 October 2016

18:30 - 20:00 19 October 2016

A Landscape of Architecture, History and Fiction

Architecture can be analogous to a history, a fiction, and a landscape. We expect a history or a novel to be written in words, but they can also be cast in concrete or seeded in soil. The catalyst to this tradition was the simultaneous and interdependent emergence in the eighteenth century of new art forms: the picturesque landscape, the analytical history, and the English novel. Each of them instigated a creative and questioning response to empiricism’s detailed investigation of subjective experience and the natural world, and together they stimulated a design practice and lyrical environmentalism that profoundly influenced subsequent centuries.

Associating the changing natural world with journeys in self-understanding, and the design process with a visual and spatial autobiography, this lecture analyses an enduring and evolving tradition from the picturesque and romanticism to modernism. Creative architects have often looked to the past to understand the present and imagine the future. Twenty-first-century architects need to appreciate the shock of the old as well as the shock of the new.

Location: UCL Campus, Darwin Lecture Theatre, Gower St, London WC1E 6XA

more info here.

'Furnitecture' by Anna Yudina

"Furnitecture is a sourcebook exploring the furnishings, interior environments, and solutions for small spaces at the meeting point between design and architecture. The book features the work of a rising generation of designers across the globe who are starting to think about furniture in an architectural way, resulting in pieces that brilliantly transform interior spaces."

seen at artwords bookshop.

New book: 'This is Temporary: how transient projects are redefining architecture' by Cate St Hill

"Temporary architecture is flourishing in our urban public spaces. Branded ‘pop-ups’ and follies to provide a moment of light entertainment they are in fact borne of a long history of more holistic architecture that is subtly suggesting how we could live, work and play more harmoniously together."

more here.

'Interior Tales' Book Presentation, Syracuse University London, 9 December

'Variations on a Theme Park' by Michael Sorkin

University of Westminster Visiting Professor Michael Sorkin's critique of urban public space has overlaps with a critique of tourism and urban leisure and has implications for public space and tourism in the UK and London.

"America's cities are being rapidly transformed by a sinister and homogenous design. A new Kind of urbanism--manipulative, dispersed, and hostile to traditional public space--is emerging both at the heart and at the edge of town in megamalls, corporate enclaves, gentrified zones, and psuedo-historic marketplaces. If anything can be described as a paradigm for these places, it's the theme park, an apparently benign environment in which all is structured to achieve maximum control and in which the idea of authentic interaction among citizens has been thoroughly purged. In this bold collection, eight of our leading urbanists and architectural critics explore the emblematic sites of this new cityscape--from Silicon Valley to Epcot Center, South Street Seaport to downtown Los Angeles--and reveal their disturbing implications for American public life."

More on the book.

Sorkin is lecturing Thursday 26 November.  

'Air Structures' and 'Deployable Structures' Book Launch: 9th November

Deployable Structures by Esther Rivas Adrover.

Deployable structures can expand and/or contract due to their geometrical, material and mechanical properties - offering the potential to create truly transforming environments. This book looks at the cutting edge of the subject, examining the different types of deployable structures and numerous design approaches. Filled with photographs, models, drawings and diagrams, Deployable Structures is packed with inspirational ideas for architecture students and practitioners.

Esther Rivas Adrover has experience as an architectural practitioner and educator. After teaching Advanced Descriptive Geometry to architecture students in Spain she studied architecture at Oxford Brookes University where she later taught at degree and postgraduate level. Her interest in complex geometries led her to work for practices including Zaha Hadid Architects, where she worked on various projects in the UK and around the world. She has also exhibited her own work several times at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Air Structures by Will McLean and Pete Silver.

Air can be used in a variety of ways to make lightweight, flexible structures. Filled with photographs, models, drawings and diagrams, this book looks at every facet of the subject, examining air-beam structures, air-cell structures, buoyant structures, inflatable structures and many more. It also looks at the construction methods that use air, such as air-inflated steel and aerated concrete.

Will McLean and Pete Silver teach at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Westminster and are the co-authors of Fabrication: The Designers Guide (2006),Introduction to Architectural Technology (2013), and Structural Engineering for Architects (2014). They both trained in the Architectural Association under John Frazer, where Pete later taught. They also established pioneering courses on real-time environmentally-responsive systems at the Bartlett (University College London).

Monday 9th November 6pm, Room M416

University of Westminster

Department of Architecture

35 Marylebone Road

London NW1 5LS

Room: M416

Nearest Station: Baker Street

New book: Refurbishment ('best of DETAIL' series)

"...the amount of work to be done on existing buildings is steadily increasing. This is partially a reflection of the advancing age of buildings, but it is also due to constant changes in building and social requirements.

The desired or necessary measures, however, are always personalised and vary considerably. As a result, there is no standardised or widely understood term that can be used to describe the range of construction activities related to existing buildings. Reflecting this, "best of DETAIL Refurbishment" presents a comprehensive range of highlights from DETAIL on the topics of renovation, extension, restoration, refurbishment and conversion. 

In addition to specialised theoretical contributions, the publication features an extensive section with examples of projects. From small-scale measures to the supersized category, it offers abundant inspiration as well as a variety of approaches to solving problems."

browse through selected pages here.

order from DETAIL.

New book: 'Asian Flavours: Creating Architecture for Culinary Culture'

'This book presents the projects of Asian and European architects on both continents, ranging from tea houses and sake bars through to entire restaurants. How are architects adapting and interpreting this cuisine in "our" latitudes? How do they respond to the conditions and cultures in these spaces without simply simulating an "Asian decor"?'

from DETAIL.

browse through the book here.

New books: Rough Interiors and Liquid Spaces

"Rough Interiors presents 55 projects whose designers used the existing historic substance as the basis for their creative processes. The magic of patina and traces of the past are maintained and deliberately integrated into the design concept. "

More here.

"Liquid Spaces features a wide spectrum of unconventional environments ranging from experimental installations to complex productions. Each one of these spaces plays with the boundaries of human perception, triggering sensual encounters that activate the senses in surprising ways."

More here.

Camberwell Postgraduate Summer Show 2015, 16 Jul - 22 Jul 2015

Show includes examples of MA work from Book Arts, Designer Maker,Fine Art Digital, Illustration and Printmaking

Location:
Camberwell College of Arts
45-65 Peckham Road, London
SE5 8UF

open to general public:
Friday 17 July - 10.00 am - 8.00 pm
Saturday 18 July - 11.00 am - 5.00 pm
Sunday 19 July - Closed
Monday 20 July - 10.00 am - 8.00 pm
Tuesday 20 July - 10.00 am - 8.00 pm
Wednesday 22 July - 10.00 am - 5.00 pm

more here.

New book: 'The Material Imagination', edited by Matthew Mindrup

"As an alternative to a formal approach in architectural design, this book challenges readers to rethink the reverie of materials in architecture through an examination of historical precedent, architectural practice, literary sources, philosophical analyses and everyday experience. Focusing on matter as the premise of an architect’s imagination, each chapter identifies and graphically illustrates how material imagination defines the conceptual premises for making architecture."

"Lessons for Students in Architecture" by Herman Hertzberger

"Rather than supplying the reader with design recipes... Hertzberger has provided an essential source of inspiration.  In his view everyone - the more he sees, experiences, and absorbs - is automatically in possession of an ever-expanding arsenal of potential instructions with which to choose a path towards a result."

more here.

New book: 'Bathroom' by Barbara Penner

 

Bathroom charts the evolution of the bathroom and the habits and lifestyles to which it gave rise. It shows how and why the bathroom emerged and how it became an international symbol of key modern values, such as cleanliness, order and progress. The modern bathroom, its technologies and its customs have been exported globally through colonialism, the media, fashion, world expositions and tourism. Barbara Penner explores the conflicts this process has caused, as well as discussing more user-friendly and low-tech alternatives, which are set to become ever more relevant in our environmentally conscious age.

Abundantly illustrated, Bathroom examines examples from history and from across the globe. From squat to high-tech bidet toilets, and from cast-iron bathtubs to monsoon showers, this is an original and eye-opening study of a significant but often overlooked space.

from Reaktion.

"The City as a Loft" Adaptive Reuse Lecture by Kees Christiaanse 22 January 2014

'The City as a Loft'

Kees Christiaanse will present ideas and concepts from his book, The City as a Loft: Adaptive Reuse as a Resource for Sustainable Urban Development.

A desire for urbanity, identity and indentification has been a major factor during the last thirty years in stimulating the preservation and conversion of derelict structures dating from the industrial era. Buildings like this have their own specific features and a relationship to history and context, while at the same time being open to current and future needs. The buildings attract involvement by local people and stand out with their qualities of stability and openness. The word 'loft' is used to describe these urban qualities: adaptable, flexible and at the same time powerful and authentic spaces in which people can live and work.

The thirty portraits of reused industrial areas presented in the book show a wide variety of locations all around the globe in which reinterpretations of the legacy of the industrial age are releasing tremendous energy and creativity. The book examines the backgrounds, people and concepts involved and illustrates various strategies for reuse. In essays and interviews, specialists from both the theoretical and practical fields explain their findings and experiences.

18:30 - 20:00 22 January 2014

Location: Christopher Ingold Auditorium, UCL Chemistry Building, 20 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0AJ

Françoise Bollack's 5 Adaptive Reuse Strategies

In her book Old Buildings, New Forms, Françoise Bollack divides adaptive reuse projects into five categories, and illustrates each with a diagram (from left to right): wraps, weavings, juxtapositions, parasites, and insertions.

Insertion for instance, is exemplified by a 2004 project by FNP Architekten.  A crane dropped a new shell of weather-resistant plywood inside a 200-year-old abandoned pigsty in Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany. The “house within a house” is now used as an occasional showroom and meeting place.

To see examples of the other strategies see the article in ARCHITECT.

Or buy the book.

Image Credits: Monacelli Press

Pamphlet Architecture 34: Fathoming the Unfathomable

Pamphlet Architecture 34 by architects and educators Perry Kulper and Nat Chard speculates on how architecture might discuss indeterminate conditions of production through a generative agency of representation. Kulper and Chard explore the indeterminacy of architectural research through drawings that exceed traditional drawing space. Located in two different countries, they communicate by shipping each drawing across geographical borders. As a result the drawing acts as a tactical and conversational medium, providing the architects with new opportunities for the confluence of the uncertain.

more at Princeton Architectural Press.