Review: Exchange. Patrick Lynch and Camilo Rebelo
A review of Exchange, a talk by Patrick Lynch and Camilo Rebelo in the Forum, 10 March 2010 While London’s Gunners were beating the Portistas to a five-nil defeat up the road at Ashburton Grove, a rather more sedate and thankfully more reciprocal meeting between the two cities was being played out at Spring House. As part of Celebration Week, ASD tutor Patrick Lynch and FAUP tutor Camilo Rebelo took part in an event organized by MA&DE and moderated by MA&DE organiser and ASD Research Student Paulo Moreira. Presenting a selection of their …
V&A, RIBA & aberrant architecture ‘re-connect’ with students from LondonMet
On Tuesday 23 February 2010, a guest-list of creative professionals took part in ‘Office Futures’, a workshop put on by aberrant architecture and RIBA at the V&A Museum. The workshop was the second in a series of events called ‘V&A Connects’, a new interactive programme that invites design professionals and practitioners to discuss and debate the leading issues in creative industries, such as architecture, interior design, fashion and the media. Due to the success of the event, aberrant architecture, the V&A’s architecture …
There’s no place like home…
V&A Architecture Residents relocate Studio 10 to their new pad in South Ken. Studio 10 tutors, David Chambers and Kevin Haley of aberrant architecture, currently hold the Architecture Residency at the Victoria & Albert Museum, in London. Over the course of the V&A residency, aberrant architecture will be researching past and present flexible working practices for their project ‘This is a workplace too’. The project is already seeing them extract useful and enlightening historical precedents from the extensive V&A and RIBA …
Experiencing Flemish architecture
In November Studio 1 took the Eurostar across the channel to Belgium. We visited three cities during six days; Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent. During the time spent there we visited ten built projects and buildings in process to be constructed. The trip started off in the architecturally incoherent capital, yet cosmopolitan and home to the headquarters of European Union. The weather was unreliable and it was freezing cold as we walked the streets of Brussels. The highlight of Brussels was an organized viewing of Ernest Salu funerary Sculptor’s …
Ghost walking down the stairs
Diploma Unit 5 commended in Glasgow Competition To mark the 100th anniversary of the completion of the Mackintosh Building, the Glasgow School of Art held a celebratory international symposium from 15–18 December. The main event was a student charrette to design a new architecture department adjacent to the School of Art and opposite the new extension proposed by Steven Holl. Student teams were invited from Tokyo, Melbourne, Venice, Beijing, Delhi, Dublin, Barcelona, Copenhagen and London Metropolitan University Unit 5. Being the largest group, …
Re-establishing poetics in modern architecture. Anders Munck in the Forum
A review of Anders Munck's lecture in the Forum, Tuesday 24 November 2009 I have never been to Sigurd Lewerentz’s Saint Peter’s Church in Klippan, but from the images I have seen and the reports of those who have, it is placed very high up on my architectural wish list. Anders Munck’s talk about the church, last Tuesday evening at Spring House, only increased my enthusiasm for planning a journey to Sweden, as soon as possible. Anders Munck is an architect teaching at the Architecture School at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in …
Patamatic cinema. Thomas Wiesner in the Forum
A review of Thomas Wiesner's lecture in the Forum, Tuesday 24 November 2009. The human eye features two types of photoreceptors: at the centre of the retina approximately 4.5 million ‘cone’ cells are concentrated, good at distinguishing detail and colour, while distributed away from the centre there are roughly 90 million ‘rod’ cells, which aren’t. The rod cells are great for distinguishing movement in low light and are used in peripheral vision, helping us to avoid sabre-toothed tigers in the night. Peripheral vision gives rise to an …
Every building has a story to tell.
Studio 3 in Frankfurt
Studio 3 has just come back from a very engaged studio trip to Kronberg, Frankfurt. This year Undergraduate Studio 3 with tutors Sandra Denicke-Polcher and Torange Khonsari have been commissioned to design and build the Event Spaces for the Cultural Summer Festival 2010 in Kronberg, Frankfurt. The trip has been joined by Stef Rhodes from ASD Projects to support the live work. This project has a real client, budget and construction deadline and students learn what it takes to bring an architectural idea on site. In Kronberg, all 18 students lived with …
Sharp edges: Unit 1 in Monpazier, France
A short summary of Diploma Unit 1ʼs trip to Monpazier in Southern France A quick look at the clear grid plan of Monpazier, a well-preserved example of a medieval Bastide town in the Dordogne region of France, might well lead one to believe that a week was a long time to spend in such a small, apparently simple town. The clarity of its geometry and strongly defined boundary belies the richness and subtle complexity of the place, which nestles on a crest of a rolling French agricultural landscape. Travelling by train to Bergerac and by coach to …
Of signing a contract. Inside the Free Unit
All architecture students have an idea of what a contract is to a varying degree. Those of us with some experience of working in a practice know that there exist contractors and contracts to be signed with them, and that the other party (it appears) will always try to do everything in their power to make you breach the contract, so as to get out of fulfilling their side of it, later suggesting that you should have seen it coming. There seems to be something inhumane about a contract – is it not some physical proof that we are not prepared to trust …
Real Time 2007–2009
Department of Architecture and Spatial Design
London Metropolitan University
