Category: Events and Exhibitions

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2015-16 :: Carlo Diaco :: Fracture in Forming

7 March 2016
  • Thursday 10th March 2016, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

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Over the last two decades, technological innovation has dramatically changed the way architects and engineers work. The software tools available today have inspired the generation, modelling and optimisation of shapes with a level of complexity that could hardly have been imagined just a few years ago. With ever-expanding research on materials, innovative products have been developed, which allow for constructions that are stronger, lighter and more challenging. Nevertheless, we are still waiting for the advancement of 3D printing, robotics and digital fabrications, so that they can become a real, economical alternative to traditional construction methods. In light of this, what are the main challenges architects’ face in getting their concepts built?

Carlo is a director at AKT II, a London-based structural engineering firm. Passionate about geometry and computation, he enjoys managing the transition from the abstract to the physical. He is also team leader of P.art, the computational research team within AKT II, and has recently been involved in the design of the Google headquarters in California, along with a design team led by Heatherwick Studio and B.I.G. Other projects of note include the award-winning Sainsbury Laboratory at Cambridge University, the complex steel façade of Birmingham New Street Station and Al Fayah Park in Abu Dhabi.

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2015-16 :: Alberto Pérez-Gomez :: Attunement: Architecture after the Crisis of Modern Science

29 February 2016
  • Thursday 3rd March 2016, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

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Architecture remains in crisis, its social relevance lost between the two poles of formal innovation and technical sustainability. This lecture discusses possibilities for an architecture that can enhance our human values and capacities, an architecture that is connected–attuned–to its location and its inhabitants. Architecture, a multisensory–not pictorial–experience, operates as a communicative setting for societies; its beauty and its meaning lie in its connection to human health and self-understanding. Drawing on recent work in embodied cognition, the lecture argues that the environment, including the built environment, matters not only as a material ecology but because it is nothing less than a constituent part of our consciousness. Our physical places are of utmost importance for our wellbeing. Architecture is seen through the lens of mood and atmosphere, linking these ideas to the key German concept of Stimmung–attunement–with roots in Pythagorean harmony and Vitruvian temperance (or proportion), and its modern reliance of the linguistic nature of the human imagination.

Alberto Pérez-Gómez was born in Mexico City in 1949, where he studied architecture and practiced. In 1983 he became Director of Carleton University’s School of Architecture. Since January 1987 he has occupied the Bronfman Chair of Architectural History at McGill University, where he founded the History and Theory Master’s and Doctoral Programs. He has lectured extensively around the world and is the author of numerous articles. His book Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science (MIT Press, 1983) won the Hitchcock Award in 1984. Later books include Polyphilo or The Dark Forest Revisited (1992), Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge (1997), and most recently, Built upon Love: Architectural Longing after Ethics and Aesthetics (2006). Perez-Gomez is also co-editor of a well-known series of books entitled Chora: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture. His most recent work examines connections between phenomenology, recent cognitive science and emerging language, seeking attunement in architecture and the urban environment.

 

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2015-16 :: Vaughan Oliver Where Is My Mind? :: The Work of Vaughan Oliver and the Pixies

19 February 2016
  • Thursday 25th February 2016, 6.30pm
  • Exhibition Private View begins 7.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

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Vaughan Oliver will be discussing his exhibition ‘Where Is My Mind?’, on his long-standing collaboration with cult American band the Pixies. A private viewing of the exhibition will begin after the talk at 7.30pm.

Vaughan Oliver is an art director, graphic designer and consultant with 35 years experience of working in all areas of graphic design. Specialising in work for the music industry, Oliver’s unique approach has attracted clients from a broader field including fashion, publishing, packaging, film and television, theatre, architecture, retail, advertising, food, dance, erotica, football and education. He has enjoyed numerous international “solo” shows including Paris, Tokyo, Osaka, Los Angeles and Athens. “Vaughan Oliver: visceral pleasures”, a design monograph by Rick Poynor was published in November, 2000. In 2011 Vaughan was awarded an Honorary MA by the University of the Creative Arts (UCA), Surrey and a Visiting Professorship at the University of Greenwich. In 2013 Vaughan was elected into the AGI, Alliance Graphique International: an elite group of graphic designers with 643 members from 38 countries worldwide. In 2014 Vaughan was awarded a further Visiting Professorship at the UCA, Epsom. He is also featured as one of 75 profiles of “Graphic Visionaries” from 100 years of graphic design published in 2015 by Laurence King.

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2015-16 :: Martin Rein-Cano :: Personal Public Space

15 February 2016
  • Thursday 18th February 2016, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

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Martin Rein-Cano will be presenting the Superkilen project by TOPOTEK 1, a public park in the culturally diverse neighbourhood of Nørrebro, Copenhagen. As a reflection and celebration of the neighbourhood’s heterogeneity, a collection of foreign objects representing over 50 nationalities allow the reality of diversity to be spectacled, representing the identities of the community’s migrant backgrounds in Danish public space.

Founded in 1996, Martin Rein-Cano will present TOPOTEK 1 projects from the past 20 years, with a focus on the design of urban open spaces. Based on a critical understanding of immanent realities, the search for conceptual approaches leads him to decided statements concerning the urban context. Throughout design, planning and construction he searches for solutions for independent new parks, squares, sports-grounds, court-yards and gardens, whose designs answer to contemporary requirements for variability, communication and sensuality. Collaboration is a central issue in Martin Rein-Cano’s work, as a concept of merging qualities and abilities that extends from site conditions and design ideas, the involvement of a plethora of related fields, through to recognizing and esteeming the asset of ongoing collective input from client and designer.

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2015-16 :: Mike Aling :: Spatial Codices: On Architecture Book Design

10 February 2016
  • Thursday 11th February 2016, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

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Mike will be discussing his architecture book design work developed over the last few years, as well as ongoing research into the histories and theories of the architecture book canon. Through an exploration of artists’ books, topological texts, cybernetic and ergodic literatures, sequential art and graphic novels, visual language and digital post-print medias, the established role of the book in/as a work of architecture is opened up and its futures speculated upon.

Mike Aling is a senior lecturer at the University of Greenwich Department of Architecture and Landscape, where he is Design Co-ordinator of the MArch Architecture programme. He co-runs MArch Unit 15 with Nic Clear, a postgraduate design unit specialising in the use of film and animation to propose architectural concepts and interventions. Mike is a member of the AVATAR (Advanced Virtual and Technological Architectural Research) group, where he is Co-ordinator of publications. Alongside his work as a founding member of unitfifteen-Research, Mike’s research explores future anatomies of architecture books and digital design media.

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2015-16 :: Rory Olcayto :: The Secret History of the Architects’ Journal 2008-16

29 January 2016
  • Thursday 4th February 2016, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

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Rory Olcayto looks at the highs and lows of architectural journalism at the world’s most important architecture magazine.

Rory is an award-winning journalist and critic and editor of the Architects’ Journal. Before his career in journalism, Rory studied architecture at the University of Strathclyde, worked in practice in Glasgow, Liege and Istanbul, and as a designer in the videogames industry. He also led a first-year design studio at Strathclyde University for two years and today is a guest critic at a number of UK and Irish universities. Rory is a regular commentator on radio and television, and in national newspapers, and regularly speaks at industry events. Rory has been a BCI Awards judge since 2009, a RIBA Awards judge and in 2015, was a member of the Stirling Prize jury. In 2015, under his editorship, the AJ was nominated for an unprecedented 12 media awards, winning four, with Rory picking up IBP magazine of the year on behalf of AJ (for the second time in a row) and architecture writer of the Year (the third time he has won the award). In March he takes on a new role: chief executive of Open City, the charity behind Open House London.

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2015-16 :: Liz Harrison and Fran Cottell :: Cold Storage

25 January 2016
  • Thursday 28th January 2016, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

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Liz Harrison and Fran Cottell will talk about the work they have on display in the Stephen Lawrence Gallery in the context of their practices. Both artists use the concept of architecture as image/object, both in the work’s format, its use as site specific space and as a container for metaphor. The work specifically uses the notion of the home as a private container and as a symbol for ones existence, behavior, change, desires, fears and stuff. They have previously collaborated on ‘Concrete Dreams: art, architecture and social space’ APT Gallery, London 2008 and ‘when I get home I hope’, South London Gallery, 2013.

Fran Cottell primarily works with live installation, performance and documentation (film/photography/text). Recent and current projects include: collaborations with architect Professor Marianne Mueller for the Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground (2016) at the Swedish Research group, Architecture in Effect (2013-) and Concrete Geometries: The Relational in Architecture at the Architectural Association, London (2011). The Ebook House: From Display to BACK to FRONT (2012) supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation, available from www.ktpress.co.uk, documents the series of live installations in her house alongside offsite projects for CGPLondon. Her archive performance projects from the 1980’s were presented, and new work commissioned, for Damn braces; Bless relaxes, a Contemporary Art Society exhibition curated by Helen Kaplinsky at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2013/14) and Mima, Middlesbrough (2014) and developed for Congress of Performance Art: Ibiza (2014). She is a Senior Lecturer at Camberwell College of Arts in Fine Art, and her research is supported by the UAL Graduate School. http://www.francottell.com/ 

Liz Harrison utilises a broad range of eclectic media, incorporating sculptural forms and transforming architectural space with light, illusion and image. Visual narratives inherent in the work explore disparate sites as the home, the city and the countryside. The questions raised and explored through installation concern contemporary issues that are particularly relevant to the urban environment. The work is often site specific. She exhibits both nationally and internationally including at the ICA, the Serpentine, and the Whitechapel Art Galleries. She taught as Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Camberwell College of Arts, UAL from 1987-2008. Recent projects include 2015: Perdute Padre 2, Museum of Modern Art Ugo Cara – Muggia, Italy, 2014: GB<Switch>NL Pulchri, The Hague, 2012: Idyll, solo show, Art First, London, 2011: PROJECT-ion, APT Gallery, London, 2010: When Birds Sing Up, a sound installation sited in Deptford Rail Station, for Deptford X 2010, winner of Deptford X Award. http://www.lizharrison.co.uk

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2015-16 :: Helen Castle :: The Responsible Profession? The search for morality and meaning in architecture

13 January 2016
  • Thursday 21st January 2016, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

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Days after Zaha Hadid became the first woman to receive the RIBA Gold Medal, she was panned in the media for her questionable choice of clients – Middle East rulers and Russian oligarchs. The inference was she is complicit in the abuses of those she works for. Why is it so much more damning to be creating architecture for an authoritarian regime than to be filling up our tanks with their petrol? What would have happened if some of the greatest architects in our history had refused to work for an autocratic pope or emperor? These are conflicting times. A month after the RIBA awarded Zaha with her medal, they drew up a shortlist for the Stirling Prize of socially worthy buildings – a cancer centre, a school, social housing, an extension for a university museum and a school of architecture. The judges complimented AHMM’s winning Burntwood School for its ability to demonstrate ‘the full range of skills that architects can offer society’. At a time that high-quality commissions in education and housing are few and far between, what is an architect’s responsibility to steer a socially meaningful course for architecture? And what might that look like?

Helen is Editor of Architectural Design (AD) and Executive Commissioning Editor on the Global Architecture list at John Wiley publishing. She has over 25 years of publishing experience on architecture publications. She had her first job as a graduate on AD in the early 90s before working for other publishers and coming back to AD in 1999 to work for Wiley. She has a BA in History of Art and Architecture from the University of East Anglia and a Masters in Architectural History from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.

Greenwich Landscape & Architecture Society :: Christmas Drinks and Guest Speaker Richard Wilson

2 December 2015
  • Wednesday 16th December 2015; 6.00 – 9.00
  • Stockwell Street 11 Crit Pit

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Christmas drinks in the crit pit, Wednesday 16th December 6pm onwards.

Guest speaker Richard Wilson (Turning the Place Over)

“I’m not an architect, you’re not a sculptor. You make the building and I’ll tamper with it”

Also past student’s (President’s Medal Nominees) work, all accompanied by free drinks and nibbles!

 

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2015-16 :: Eric Parry :: Context

24 November 2015
  • Thursday 26th November 2015, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

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Eric established Eric Parry Architects in 1983. Under his leadership, the practice has developed a reputation for delivering beautifully crafted and well considered buildings that respond to their context. London has been the focus and the setting for most of his work. He was elected Royal Academician (RA) in 2006 and awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Arts from the University of Bath in 2012.

In addition to his work in architectural practice, Eric serves on the Kettle’s Yard Committee, the Canterbury Cathedral Fabric Advisory Committee, the Mayor’s Design Advisory Panel, the Council of the British School at Rome and is an Architecture Foundation Trustee. He has in the past served on the Arts Council of England’s Visual Arts and Architecture panel, chaired the Royal Academy Architecture Committee and the RIBA Awards Group, and was President of the Architectural Association.