Berlin's Reichstag dome and ramp in engineered wood

Finnish engineered timber company Metsa Wood has designed a reconstruction of the Reichstag, the home of the German Parliament, in engineered wood. More information and videos on  www.metsawood.com/planb

Aerocene metallic orbs by Tomás Saraceno in Paris' Grand Palais

"By releasing hot air from inside the Aerocene globes, pressure can be regulated and the altitude of the orbs can be controlled. They could also float along natural jet streams, using these as a way of changing direction."

from dezeen.

The World of Charles and Ray Eames at the Barbican until 14 February

The World of Charles and Ray Eames

21 October 2015 - 14 February 2016

Charles and Ray Eames are among the most influential designers of the 20th century. Enthusiastic and tireless experimenters, this husband and wife duo moved fluidly between the fields of photography, film, architecture, exhibition-making, and furniture and product design.

at the Art Gallery 

Barbican Centre

Silk Street London 

EC2Y 8DS

Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy until 13 December

"Ai became widely known in Britain after his sunflower seeds installation in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2010 but this is the first major institutional survey of his work ever held in the UK and it bridges over two decades of his extraordinary career.

Curated in collaboration with Ai Weiwei from his studio in Beijing, we present some of his most important works from the time he returned to China from the US in 1993 right up to present day. Among new works created specifically for our galleries and courtyard are a number of large-scale installations, as well as works showcasing everything from marble and steel to tea and glass. 

With typical boldness, the chosen works explore a multitude of challenging themes, drawing on his own experience to comment on creative freedom, censorship and human rights, as well as examining contemporary Chinese art and society."

It's recommended that you book ahead of time.

Royal Academy

Burlington House

Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD

more here and here.

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

'Housing Social Life', Technical Studies Lecture by Peter Barber, 10 December

Peter Barber – Peter Barber Architects

The Social Life of Housing

Thursday 10th December, 6.30pm, Room M416 (Evans)

Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment

University of Westminster

35 Marylebone Road

London NW1 5LS

“We think that space conditions, and is in turn conditioned by, society and culture and that architecture can create the potential for social action and activity” Peter Barber Architects

Peter Barber previously worked with Richard Rogers, Will Alsop and Jestico+Whiles prior to establishing his own practice in 1989. He is currently a design tutor at the University of Westminster, teaching MArch Studio with Ben Stringer. He has lectured about the work of the Practice at many institutions, including the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Architectural League in New York, and numerous international and domestic university schools of architecture including Genoa, Frankfurt, Brighton, Kingston, Glasgow and The Bartlett.

In October 2001 the Practice won first prize in the Architecture Foundation's prestigious Innovations in Housing Competition. The project won a Housing Design Award, runner-up in Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, AIA Award and RIBA Award. It was also short-listed to the last 10 for the 2006 Stirling Prize. A series of radical urban housing projects have followed which have variously won Housing Design Awards, RIBA Awards and AIA Awards. Peter Barber Architects have won the Building Design Architect of the Year for Housing in 2007 and 2010. In 2015, Peter Barber Architects landed the Royal Academy’s top architecture prize for its alternative vision for low-cost housing on London’s Mount Pleasant.

Peter Barber will talk about the development of his practices work and in particular the evolution and reinvigoration of housing typologies such as the terrace/courtyard hybrid at Donnybrook Quarter and the McGrath Road project where Barber reexamines the back-to-back housing typology.

For details contact Will McLean / Pete Silver

w.f.mclean@westminster.ac.uk

Installations by Cornelia Parker

"For some years Cornelia Parker’s work has been concerned with formalising things beyond our control, containing the volatile and making it into something that is quiet and contemplative like the ‘eye of the storm’. She is fascinated with processes in the world that mimic cartoon ‘deaths’ – steamrollering, shooting full of holes, falling from cliffs and explosions. Through a combination of visual and verbal allusions her work triggers cultural metaphors and personal associations, which allow the viewer to witness the transformation of the most ordinary objects into something compelling and extraordinary."

not by Parker, but undoubtedly influenced by her:

for more.

+FARM Winter Studio 2016 in the US: OPEN CALL

'Crafting Technique'

Studio Dates: Wed January 6th - Mon, January 11th
Application Deadline: Saturday, December 20th at 11:59pm
Location: Hall House Farm in Perrysburg, New York, US

The project for this winter intensive design, fabrication, and construction studio is an interactive site specific installation. Studio participants will engage in a dynamic design process culminating in the construction of a full-scale structure that amplifies the unique characteristics of the site into a dynamic full scale structure that takes into account digital and analogue process to craft new techniques for making architecture.

Six applicants selected from the open call will work directly with professional fabricators, architects, digital specialists, and educators exposing the participants to emerging design, computation, fabrication, and construction practices in the field of architecture.

[+++ Click to Apply ]

more info on plusFARM.

'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.  

The Byzantine Fresco Chapel by François de Menil

"The Byzantine Fresco Chapel is a part of the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas designed by architect François de Menil. The suspended-glass "walls" are not replicas of the chapel that the frescoes were removed from, but created a new context for displaying the icons. In order not to simply replicate the original chapel, de Menil designed "a mediating external building with an embedded steel structure – a 'reliquary box' – which forms a neutral enclosure for a freestanding chapel," according to Christine Slessor in The Architectural Review."

The Tempietto by Donato Bramante, 1502

"Βramante’s Tempietto  sits on the Janiculum Hill (Gianicolo) in Rome, a small temple incorporated into the larger project of San Pietro in Montorio. Currently, the temple occupies a quadrilateral courtyard and is only visible to the public from a single, fixed, exterior point. However... the Tempietto was intended to be viewed from all sides, surrounded by an additional ring of columns, ultimately creating a series of concentric circular boundaries. The interiority of the Tempietto is placed in contrast to the seeming exteriority of the courtyard, only to be made interior again by the surrounding building." -Michael Vlasopoulos

left: section of the building, right: Harvard University team's reconstruction of the building's intended courtyard.

more here.

Body Building Workshop

For PLAY week, a week of diverse workshops meant to inaugurate the newly renovated studio spaces at University of Westminster, BAIA tutors teamed up with David Scott and Ed Lancaster of the fabLAB to produce 'body agent' figures.  The body agents were conceived, built and installed by groups of Interior Architecture and Architecture students to question, surprise and inspire ideas about occupation and use of the new space.