Category: Events and Exhibitions

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2017-2018 :: Perry Kulper Assemblies :: Drawn Cosmologies

15th January 2018
  • Thursday 25th January 2018, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

‘Assemblies: Drawn Cosmologies’ will tease out representational and spatial capacities of the architectural drawing. Saddling up Wallace Stevens’ seminal poem ’13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ the talk will expose hunches, wild assertions and project images as partial evidence. Equally, behind-the-scenes techniques to build a discipline for design will be foregrounded—these deployed in search of cultural gravity through design that crawls up the sleeves of the discipline, challenging what’s expected, normalized and frequently flattened. These techniques include: conjuring pithy terms; language folds; exercising fast twitch design muscles; analogic thinking; and making work that navigates varied ideas—all mobilized toward prompting the cultural imagination.

Perry Kulper is an architect and Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan. In a prior life he was a SCI-Arc faculty member for 17 years and held visiting teaching positions at Penn and ASU. After graduate studies at Columbia University he worked in the offices of Eisenman/Robertson, Robert A.M. Stern and Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown before moving to Los Angeles. His primary interests include: the generative potential of architectural drawing; the different spatial opportunities offered by using diverse design methods in design practices; and in broadening the conceptual range by which architecture contributes to our cultural imagination. In 2013 he published Pamphlet Architecture 34, ‘Fathoming the Unfathomable: Archival Ghosts and Paradoxical Shadows’ with friend and collaborator Nat Chard. Recently he has ventured into the digital world, attempting to get a handle on ‘cut + paste’ operations in Photoshop. Fantastic beasts have also been on his mind.

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2017-2018 :: Kenneth R. Olwig :: Greenwich and the Genesis of Landscape as Scenic Space – and the Enclosure of Landscape as ‘Commons’ Place

30th November 2017
  • Thursday 7th December 2017, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

Greenwich is the site of locations symbolically key to both the genesis of landscape as scenic space and the common(s) landscapes of polity and place enclosed and appropriated by scenic landscape. One location is the Royal Observatory, home to the phantom “presence” of the prime meridian – key to the mapping of the “global” space ruled by the neighbouring Royal Navy. Another is the Queen’s House, designed by Inigo Jones for Queen Anne of Denmark, where she and her court might have had a mean time performing masques within Jones’ designed landscape scenery if Anne had lived to see its completion.

Kenneth R. Olwig is professor emeritus at the Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp. His focus has been on the history of landscape in theory and practice, and the relationship between landscape and differing ideas of law, justice and democracy. He is the author of ‘Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic’ and is currently preparing a collection of his journal articles to be published by Routledge under the provisional title ‘The Meanings of Landscape: Essays on Place, Space, Environment and Justice’. He was born on Staten Island, New York City, and has taught at universities in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, where he resides.

 

 

 

University of Greenwich Department of Architecture & Landscape presents Project Space: Selected Architectural Projects 2017

27th November 2017
  • 27th November > 16th December 2017
  • Private View: Thursday 30th November 7.30 > 9.30
    (following Professor Nic Clear’s Hawksmoor lecture)

Works by:

Matthew Buckley

Iulia Cistelecan

De He

Andrei Ciprian Cojocaru

Vlad Dimitru

Sofia Kanarelli

Farid Karim

Nic Clear and Hyun Jun Park

 

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Project Space

Ground Floor

11 Stockwell Street

Greenwich

London SE10 9BD

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2017-2018 :: Nic Clear :: Professorial Inaugural Lecture F.U.N.: Future Urban Networks

27th November 2017
  • Thursday 30th November 2017, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

We are currently at a moment of profound technological change and while there is a great deal of hype surrounding the Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno technologies, the revolutionary significance of these developments on our cities is either not fully grasped, or seen in the context of dystopian scenarios of totalitarian enslavement and runaway grey goo. In this lecture Professor Nic Clear will try and outline how our fears of technology are tied to a variety of nostalgic concepts of the city and an ideology of technophobia, he will contrast this more positivist readings of technology some of which are taken from the discourse of speculative fiction. Professor Clear will then describe a series of urban projects that speculate on the implementation of the NBIC technologies in a post-singularity, post scarcity world that questions the laissez-faire attitudes that underpin much of contemporary society.

Professor Nic Clear is an architect, writer and curator, he is Professor of Architecture and Head of the Department of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Greenwich, where he is also Co-Director of the AVATAR research Group. In 2015 Nic was the Inaugural Professor for Research in Visionary Cities at the Institute of Fine Arts in Vienna. Nic has written extensively on science fiction and architecture and produced a number of speculative projects that propose architecture ‘as’ science fiction. Nic has designed and curated a number of critically acclaimed exhibitions and his own work has been exhibited internationally.

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2017-2018 :: Alison Brooks :: The Ideal and the Real – why Civicness is the project

20th November 2017
  • Thursday 23rd November 2017, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

Alison Brooks, founder of the multi-award winning London-based practice Alison Brooks Architects will discuss her practice philosophy, techniques and the ideal of ‘civicness’ using current and recently completed projects: The Cohen Quadrangle at Oxford University; a high rise urban block in Kings Cross, London, The Smile Pavilion and housing scheme Ely Court, shortlisted for the 2017 Mies Award for contemporary European architecture.

Alison Brooks, Principal and Creative Director of Alison Brooks Architects, is recognised as one of the leading architects of her generation. She has developed an international reputation for design innovation, as well as a voice advocating for the social project of architecture and the role of women in the profession. Since establishing Alison Brooks Architects in 1996, she has attracted acclaim for her work in urban design, housing, buildings for the arts and higher education. Named by Debrett’s as one of ‘Britain’s 500 Most Influential’, Alison Brooks is the only British architect to have won all three of the UK’s most prestigious awards for architecture: the RIBA Stirling Prize, Manser Medal and Stephen Lawrence Prize. Most recently, in 2017, Alison was award the AJ100 Contribution to the Profession Award.

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2017-2018 :: Owen Hopkins :: Nicholas Hawksmoor: The Man and the Myth

6th November 2017
  • Thursday 9th November 2017, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

Nicholas Hawksmoor (1662–1736) is considered one of Britain’s greatest architects. He was involved in the grandest architectural projects of his age and today is best known for his London churches – six idiosyncratic edifices of white Portland stone that remain standing today, proud and tall in the otherwise radically changed cityscape. Until comparatively recently, however, Hawksmoor was thought to be, at best, a second-rate talent: merely Sir Christopher Wren’s slightly odd apprentice, or the practically minded assistant to Sir John Vanbrugh. In this lecture, Owen Hopkins brings to life the dramatic story of Hawksmoor’s resurrection from the margins of history, charting how his architecture came to inspire observers as diverse as T. S. Eliot, James Stirling, Robert Venturi and Peter Ackroyd, and continues to catch the eye of architects today.

Owen Hopkins is a writer, historian and curator of architecture. He is Senior Curator of Exhibitions and Education at Sir John Soane’s Museum. Prior to that he was Architecture Programme Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts. A frequent contributor to the architectural press, Hopkins is author of five books, including From the Shadows: The Architecture and Afterlife of Nicholas Hawksmoor (2015). His most recent book is Lost Futures: The Disappearing Architecture of Post-War Britain (2017).

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2017-2018 :: Brendan Neiland :: Drawing on Life

30th October 2017
  • Thursday 2nd November 2017, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003

This lecture will trace Brendan Neiland’s journey in painting from the early days in the Seminary, to Birmingham and its art school, onto the Royal College. He will discuss the influence of the architecture of major cities in relation to the development of his work.

Brendan Neiland is a painter. He is represented by the Redfern Gallery, London, and his work is in collections of major museums and galleries worldwide, including in the Victoria and Albert museum London, the Tate Gallery London, and the Collections of the British Council and the Arts Council of Great Britain.

Image:‘Escalier’ (Acrylic on canvas, 6ft x 4ft), 2017.

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2017-2018 :: Bryan Cantley :: Classificationing

20th October 2017

Please note this lecture will take place on a TUESDAY, not Thursday as usual

  • Tuesday 24th October 2017, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

“Classificationing” will be a survey of Cantley’s recent experimental works, using the idea of the investigational drawing as a source code for emergent ideas. The lecture will explore technology as a generator for new social space[s]; the palimpsest as a vehicle to challenge architectural and quasi-religious structure; the prototype of the SwarmDraw, an inhabitable drawing concept; and the advent of the Taxonometric Drawing as an architectural typology. Cantley will discuss the categorizing of his work as an internal tool for dissecting content and finding new ways to produce further inventions. The idea of the drawing experiment is an underlying tenant of his studio, Form:uLA, as is the notion of the importance of internal inquiry.

Bryan Cantley is founder of Form:uLA, an experimental design practice that attempts to blur the indeterminate zone between architecture and its representation. An alumnus of UCLA, Cantley has lectured at a number of architecture schools internationally, and has been visiting faculty at SCI-ARC and Woodbury. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art purchased eleven of his models/drawings in 2001 as a part of their permanent collection, and he was the recipient of a Graham Foundation Grant in 2002. His celebrated solo exhibition “Dirty Geometries + Mechanical Imperfections” premiered at SCI-ARC in 2014. His first monograph, Mechudzu, was published in 2011.

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2017-2018 :: CJ Lim :: Inhabitable Infrastructures: Science fiction or urban future?

17th October 2017
  • Thursday 19th October 2017, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

‘Inhabitable Infrastructures: Science fiction or urban future?’ – the follow up to ‘Food City’ and ‘Smartcities and Eco-Warriors’ – explores the potential of climate change-related multi-use infrastructures that address the fundamental human requirements to protect, to provide and to participate. The stimulus for the infrastructures of resilience derives from postulated scenarios and processes gleaned from science fiction and futurology as well as current bodies of scientific knowledge regarding the changing impacts on cities. JG Ballard has written that the psychological realm of science fiction is most valuable in its predictive function, and in projecting emotions into the future. 

CJ Lim is the Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at The Bartlett, UCL and the founder of Studio 8 Architects. His teaching and designs focus on multi-disciplinary innovative interpretations of social, political, and environmental sustainability programs. He is the recipient of the Royal Academy of Arts London ‘Grand Architecture Prize’. He has authored 12 books including ‘Virtually Venice’ (2006), ‘Smartcities + Eco-warriors’ (2010), ‘Short Stories: London in two-and-a-half dimensions’ (2011) and ‘Food City’ (2014).

Books for Sale at lecture:

£20 (normal retail price £29.99) – cash sale only.

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2017-2018 :: Phyllis Richardson :: Architecture and Fiction

3rd October 2017
  • Thursday 5th October 2017, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

What happens when man-made buildings intersect with structures of the imagination? For centuries, fiction writers have used architecture to give shape and focus to narrative that in turn tells us something about their vision of the world. Most of the novels that have really gripped readers of the English canon convey feelings about buildings that are part of our built heritage, from the physicality of old stone in the novels of Thomas Hardy, to the mysticism of the Gothic style and its ghostly presence in genre novels from The Castle of Otranto, to Jane Eyre to Harry Potter. Architecture matters to fiction, but how has this relationship evolved and how will it affect the fiction of the digital age?

Phyllis Richardson is the author of several books on architecture and design, including the highly successful XS series, Nano House, and the forthcoming Superlight, published in the UK by Thames and Hudson. She has written on architecture, urban development and travel for the Financial Times, The Observer and DWELL magazine in the US. She has an M.A. in Anglo-American Literature and has published many reviews of literary fiction in the TLS, the now-defunct Los Angeles Times Book Review and other journals. She teaches English literature on the Integrated Degree programme at Goldsmiths, University of London, and blogs about architecture and occasional literary topics on Archetcetera.