• UNIT 7 Presents:  Catrina Stewart and Steve Baumann – Adventures in Dwelling
• Tuesday 6th December 2011, 6.00PM
• Norbert Singer Lecture Theatre, Avery Hill

Catrina Stewart and Steve Baumann graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture in 2011. Both receiving a distinction for their final diploma projects their work explores an architecture of inter-dependencies,  between the relentless cycle of  life, death and the city.  Key to their practices is the desire to develop new experimental typologies, and vernaculars, for 21st Century urban dwelling.  Individually and collectively their work has been published in Dezeen, BLDG BLOG, Blueprint and recently on the cover of AR.

• Tuesday 29th November 2011, 6:00PM
• Norbert Singer Lecture Theatre, Avery Hill, Mansion Site

A film preserving memories of the Lower Lea Valley before it was transformed by the 2012 Olympics; shot and scored by film director Paul Kelly and pop group Saint Etienne it is both a paean to this part of East London and an invaluable historical record of a place that no longer exists.

‘We [St Etienne] started filming thinking, like everyone else, that the bid would almost certainly fail, and that we were celebrating a neglected place, a part of east London that had somehow missed out on investment and redevelopment every time, that had been overlooked since Victorian times. Now it’s literally disappearing bit by bit, week by week.’ Observer Oct. 2005,

Or you might say that the future has finally arrived in Hackney Wick.

The film is a follow up to “Finisterre”, Saint Etienne’s acclaimed cinematic hymn to London.

The London that they love is quickly disappearing, endangered by the onward rush of cultural and commercial homogenisation, the tyranny of the chain store and the coffee bar franchise.

• CITY + LANDSCAPE – 03
• Wednesday 30th November 2011, 5:00PM
• Norbert Singer Lecture Theatre, Avery Hill, Mansion Site

DIRTY CITIES

Shrinking cities, productive landscapes and informal practices with recent projects by Boyarsky Murphy Architects.

A bottom up approach to the city challenges the notion of ‘master plan’ and suggests that the marginal, temporary and ephemeral are key to a contemporary understanding of the city.

• Tuesday 22nd November
• 6.00 PM
• Norbert Singer Lecture Theatre
• Avery Hill, Mansion

This 50’s parody of ergonomic, techno futurism was made shortly after LeCorbusier promoted the notion of architecture being a machine to live in. It presents a world in which bodies have been tailored to fit objects, rather than vice versa, and thereby become objects themselves. The characters are fragmented and atomised into compositional ingredients then carefully slotted into plastic artificiality. This is a prophetic world prior to Big Brother which has completely structured itself around an omniscient camera, with the result that this fragmentation remains irreversible, and collectivity doesn’t consist of the human body so much as inanimate or mechanical objects. As a result, a great deal of the humour stems from the disparity between functional and compositional imperatives, such as the steel-and-glass efficiency of office, street and school are offset by the circuitousness that validates domestic architecture. Here the population had been streamlined; merely to be forced through a series of ridiculous diversions and tributaries. All of which is explicated by Hulot’s own wandering gait. “Mon Oncle” predicted our present times of circuitous bureaucracy and mechanical priorities. It suggests how we must today more than ever be at peace with our machines and not let our technology seduce us, or bully us either.

• CITY + LANDSCAPE – 02
• Wednesday 23rd November at 17:00
• Lecture Theatre M055

What is a Smartcity? The lecture represents the culmination of CJ Lim’s ongoing explorations into sustainable city design that began with a proposal to revitalise the community landscape of Chicago’s DuSable Park and matured with Guangming Smartcity, a new town in Southern China for 200 000 inhabitants. The smartcity is a vision of an urban future from an architectural perspective as opposed to a planning, environmental engineering or socio-economic one. Current discourse on sustainability appears to focus either on the technical aspects of ecological design at the scale of individual buildings or establishes the general principles for planning urban environments; ‘Smartcities + Eco-warriors’ attempts to address what the spatial and phenomenological implications are when sustainable design is applied to a city, what new hybrid typologies of programme and landscape are birthed, and the role that we as citizens rather than designers will play in the production of a relevant social space. A central component of the smartcity is urban agriculture and the establishment of an ecological symbiosis between nature and built form. This lecture is structured around a series of international case studies, some commissioned by government organisations, others speculative and polemic.

Bio:
CJ Lim is the founding director of Studio 8 Architects (www.cjlim-studio8.com), a multi-disciplinary practice in architecture, landscape and urban planning, focusing on cultural, social and sustainability issues. He is also the Professor of Architecture at the Bartlett, UCL. The Royal Academy of Arts London awarded CJ the Grand Architecture Prize. His projects are part of the permanent architectural collection of the Victoria + Albert Museum London, and Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain du Centre [FRAC] Orleans France. His celebrated ‘Virtually Venice’, architecture as builtcultural assemblage, is an investigation of East-West cultures and identities, commissioned by the British Council UK for the Venice Architecture Biennale. Recent award-winning Smartcities proposals are for the Chinese and Korean Governments. His publications include ‘441/10…we’ll reconfigure your space when you’re ready’ (1996), ‘Sins + Other Spatial Relatives’ (2001), ‘Realms of Impossibility: Air, Ground, Water’ (2002), ‘How Green is Your Garden?’ (2003), ‘Museums [work in process]’ (2004), ‘NeoArchitecture: Studio 8 Architects’ (2005), ‘Devices’ (2005), ‘Virtually Venice’ (2006), and  ‘Smartcities + Eco-warriors’ (2010).

Copies of his book “Smart-cities and Eco-warriors” for sale to students.  Books to sell at discounted price of £20 (normal retail price is £29.99) – cash only.

• Friday 25th November
• Royal College of Art, Sculpture Department
• Howie Street
• London

A symposium to explore the possible shared territory between doubt and the value of designing.

Contributors include: Karin Sondergaard, Donald Smith, Shaun Murray, Nic Clear and Norbert Schoerner

Exhibitors include: Kjell Yvgne Peterson, James Moore, Felix Robbins, Kevin Green, Yorgos Loizos, and Eniatype.

e: info@eniatype.com

• OPEN LECTURE: “SHORT STORIES: London in two-and-a-half-dimensions”
• CJ.Lim Studio 8 Architects
• Monday 7th November at 18:00
• LT KW315
• Greenwich Maritime Campus

“Combining place and fiction, the book takes well-known institutions, epochs and lifestyles from tens sties across the city of London and renders them fantastic in a string of architectural short stories. The medium is an intersection of paper assemblages and text, occupying a liminal territory where familiar characters find themselves in unexpected environments and places transform into active protagonists. The stories have been exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Victoria and Albert Museum but are collected for the first time in a single volume, laid out as one phantasmagoric city vision. Painstakingly constructed, the stories encompass a retelling of the ‘Three Little Pigs’ at Smithfield, a dating agency at Battersea, and a ringed transport system manifesting as a celestial river over the great metropolis. Enthralling and inspirational, this cabinet of curiosity and wonder depicts a vision of the city that is immoral, anarchic, unscientific and at the same time glorious, ravishing and a pleasure to behold.”

Please note this lecture will take place at the Greenwich Maritime campus; not Avery Hill

Copies of the new book “Short Stories” will be available for sale to students.  Books will be sold at discounted price of £15 (normal retail price is £19.99) – cash only

CJ Lim is the founding director of Studio 8 Architects , a multi-disciplinary practice in architecture, landscape and urban planning, focusing on cultural, social and sustainability issues. He is also the Professor of Architecture at the Bartlett, UCL. The Royal Academy of Arts London awarded CJ the Grand Architecture Prize. His projects are part of the permanent architectural collection of the Victoria + Albert Museum London, and Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain du Centre [FRAC] Orleans France. His celebrated ‘Virtually Venice’, architecture as builtcultural assemblage, is an investigation of East-West cultures and identities, commissioned by the British Council UK for the Venice Architecture Biennale. Recent award-winning Smartcities proposals are for the Chinese and Korean Governments. His publications include ‘441/10…we’ll reconfigure your space when you’re ready’ (1996), ‘Sins + Other Spatial Relatives’ (2001), ‘Realms of Impossibility: Air, Ground, Water’ (2002), ‘How Green is Your Garden?’ (2003), ‘Museums [work in process]’ (2004), ‘NeoArchitecture: Studio 8 Architects’ (2005), ‘Devices’ (2005), ‘Virtually Venice’ (2006), and  ‘Smartcities + Eco-warriors’ (2010).