www.field-studies.org

Sound is gaining renewed attention within the context of architecture, the city and the built environment. There are practical reasons, such as the importance for architects and urbanists to be able to create positive, or manage negative soundscapes and noise in the city. The question of where sound ends and noise begins is an interesting topic in itself and belongs to the more poetic side of sound in the built environment. Thinking about sound means to engage with ephemeral aspects of places, particularly the changing character of the built environment over time, which traditional visual media cannot represent. Sound, harmony and music are intimately connected with culture and the question of good and bad sound is politically charged. Each revolution has its own music. If we listen, rather than look, there is a whole new and curious world to be discovered.

Field Studies provides an environment to engage with all these questions starting from a much more practical point of view. How can listening to the city and working with recorded sound become part of the creative process of making architecture? How does working with sound affect the way we engage with places? Can there be such a thing as an ‘aural sketchbook’ and of what value can it be to architects and urbanists? Can sound act as a research tool and a means to represent architectural ideas? What would future urban plans and the built environment look like if they relied on sound as much as on drawings, photographs and models?

Field Studies is for everyone who is interested in learning more about the practical and technical aspects of field recording and the potential of recorded sound as part of a creative and analytical process in architecture and urbanism. The course will be run in the form of masterclasses lead by the three tutors where students will meet different approaches to working with sound, collecting material and recording techniques. Each masterclass will establish a different brief. Students will go out on field-recording trips and learn how to manipulate, edit and present recorded material. A series of talks will complement the programme and the students’ work will be published and documented online.

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The cost of Field Studies is £150.00

Field Studies takes place from Monday 13 to Thursday 16 September 2010 at the Department of Architecture and Spatial Design, London Metropolitan University. The workshop is open to everyone and all ages, and no previous experience is requried. The course will admit maximum number of 25 students.

For further information and to register, visit http://www.field-studies.org

Venue
Department of Architecture and Spatial Design
London Metropolitan University
Spring House
40–44 Holloway Road
London N7 8JL

Book tickets >

On air is for anyone interested in singing and making music. It is an opportunity to experiment with new approaches where the audience becomes part of the choir, the rehearsal becomes part of the performance and together those taking part define the resulting work. The workshops are open to all and no previous musical experience or expertise is required.

Workshops

Each of the three composers is given one hour to explain, develop and rehearse a new work with the audience. The given framework will differ from one workshop to the next and will involve elements of traditional choral singing, improvisation, working with speech, timing, real-time sound manipulation, working with graphic scores and an engagement with movement, performance and the effects the sounds create in the space.

The afternoon will start with a brief introduction and each workshop will begin with a short rhythm and singing lesson with Musarc’s conductor Cathy Heller Jones.

Open rehearsal and concert

The last hour of On air will be open to the public. Each of the works will be introduced by its composer, revisited in a short open rehearsal and performed for the audience.

On air
Thursday 1 July 2010

Choral workshops
4.30 – 8.30pm
Tickets: £15.00 (includes concert)

Open rehearsal and concert
8.30 – 9.30pm
Tickets: £5.00

St Stephen Walbrook
39 Walbrook
London EC4N 8BN
www.ststephenwalbrook.net

Book tickets >

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Musarc has designed this event to tie in with personal and professional development. Bring your studio or office colleagues and enjoy an alternative team-building exercise and networking event with one of the most cutting-edge creative research and music platforms in London.

Read more about the composers

Tom Chant is from London, was born in 1975, plays soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet and piano and occasionally writes indeterminate music. Tom served his improvised music apprenticeship at Maggie Nicols’ Gathering sessions in London,… read more >

Neil Luck is a composer and performer based in London. His compositional practice focuses on various approaches to non-standard notations, in particular those which implicate either the composer’s own body in construction, or… read more >

Benjamin Oliver was born in 1981 and grew up in Chatham, Kent, in the UK. He left home for Yorkshire and in 2005 graduated from the University of Leeds with distinction in his MMus in Composition. Ben has just completed his DPhil… read more >

About the venue

St Stephen Walbrook marks one of the City’s most ancient sacred sites. In the second century A.D. a temple stood on the West bank of the River Walbrook, a stream running across London from the City Wall near Moorfields to the Thames. A Saxon church was built on the temple’s foundations in the seventh century and re-built in 1439 on the East side of the river which is today culverted beneath. The 15th century church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London and re-built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1672–80.

St Stephen is considered one of Wren’s masterpieces. It is a highly unusual space where classical and baroque ideas collide, crowned by a large dome which floats above a circle formed by arches springing from eight of the twelve columns underneath. In 1987 a round travertine altar by Henry Moore was installed, causing much controversy at the time. It dominates the centre of the church, but has a genuine presence and articulates the space under the dome. The rough exterior, a palimpsest witness to the changes in the fabric of the city, gives away little of the clarity and beauty of the church’s interior.

St Stephen is renown for its outstanding acoustics. Wren intended his churches to be what he called auditories, ‘in which everyone present could see, hear and feel themselves part of the congregation’. (Kerry Downes)

www.ststephenwalbrook.net

Department of Architecture
and Spatial Design
Spring House
40 – 44 Holloway Road
London N7 8JL
T 020 7133 4431
map

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You are also invited to High Street 2012
Saturday 26 June, 11am – 4 pm
First Year Architecture and Interior Architecture
students are running a market stall on Whitechapel
Market as part of the International Architecture
Student Festival.

Friday 2 July – Sunday 1 August
4th floor, Idea store, 321 Whitechapel Road
Exhibition of models, ideas and proposals to make
High Street 2012 a ‘Place of Pleasure’ by first year
Architecture and Interior Architecture students.

Musarc ‘On air’ – discounted workshop and concert tickets for subscribers
Musarc is offering tickets at a discounted price of £15.00 to ASD students, staff and Real Time subscribers for the LFA 2010 ‘On air’ workshops at St Stephen Walbrook, 1 July 2010. To make a booking, please email bookings@musarc.org quoting ‘Real Time’.

UFO operates as a network of independent practices, each office responding to its own locale whilst being able to draw on the resources of a global collective. To date, this includes offices in Australia, China, Greece, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Turkey, USA and the UK. With an international incentive, the organization yet maintains the specific qualities of local diversity. Members within the organization are currently involved in all areas of architecture, including practice, higher education, and research.

Our aim is to start from the individual client’s demand in creating an idiosyncratic architecture free from stylistic references that explicitly responds to each design briefs specific demands. We see our client’s objectives and constraints as a springboard for creative and innovative design solutions to emerge. The value that urban future organization offers a design project is a collective creative energy, innovative concepts, cutting edge technical skills, a to the organization intrinsic will to collaborate, an ability  to deliver projects of varying complexity as well as an expertise in making the apparently complex simple and buildable. Our ambition is to combining conceptional sophistication, social sensibility and technical innovation with practical inventiveness in creating an idea driven ecological architecture.

The work of UFO is examined by the dissemination of 15 UFO projects in varying scales carried out in the first 15 years of UFO’s history.

anat stern, andrew yau,  andrei martin, anna liuzzo, arjan scheer, artur ferreira viveiros, carmela notaristefano, christopher robeller, claudio lucchesi,  daniel fagerberg, david cole, denis balent,  dirk anderson, eda yetis, eduardo de oliveira barata, erlend bakke-eidsa, eva diu, francesco giordano,  giorgia cannici, gustav fagerström,  hjeong jung kim,  jackie yang,  jonas lundberg, jonas runberger, jung mook moon,  katarina larsdotter, kengo skorick, luana fabiano, marcos zotes lopez, max zinnecker, peco mulet, ruairi molloy, stephen harker, steve hardy,  theodoros kanellopoulos, thomas tong, william hailiang chen,  ying wang, zlatko haban with

peco mulet velasco,  aaron casey, artur ferreira viveiros, garry thomas, andrea fiorista, dimitris antonopoulos, elena tesoriero, francesco fiorentino, francesco sanmartino, giorgia amato, giorgos vogiatzakis, giuseppe giordano, henning hansen, isabell gonzaga, konstantinos kanellopoulos, konstantinos makrikostas, lago lopez, leyla rahnavard, lucia colosi, matti lampila, marco trifiletti, simona puglisi, alex lorente, alberto sanchez, ariane sibitkzy, david hebblewaite, jason tang, jenice chan, magnus schon, may tang, michael hughes, oliver barsoum, patrick finney, pauline murphy, peter alsterholm, peter hazer, raymond chan, ramesh depala, rob bearyman, sascha haselmayer, sonja rump, sophia ferreira, sophia lau, torbjorn lundell, yasu santo, andrea marini, jaspal virdi, esi carboo, woijiech hydzik, mark, chris robeller, rebecca woffenden, alex kaiser, tom moss  and many others

partners/collaborators: Estream Architects, Gianni Botsford Architects

consultants: BDSP, ARUPS, Halcrow, DLE, AKT, Tall Engineers, Galbriath Hunt Pennington, Planning Korea,

special thanks to :

arup acoustics, architectural association, aurora aliani, centola & associates, bahram shirdel, brett steele, don bates and peter davison lab, duncan macrae, foreign office architects, gianni botsford architects, gabriella riggi, hanif kara AKT,  Jason gill planning korea, jeff kipnis, klaus bode BDSP, london metropolitan university, luca bergamo, MHM Scandinavia, missimo mirosi, ocean net, paolo cavagnera, plasma studio, yo2, richard hyde, seb joun arups acoustics, daniel bosia arups agu, sangmyung university, seoul national university, smartlodge, tsing hua university, university of westminster, KLH Scandinavia and zaha hadid architects.

A century after the ‘mania years’ of the 1850’s when Britain’s railways grew to 7500 miles of track in under decade, the nationalized railways of post-war Britain underwent the most severe cutbacks ever inflicted on a modern transport system. Nearly a third of Britain’s lines were cut, either by the heavy hand of the infamous Dr Beaching or by an ever-growing enthusiasm for the road. At the heart of these cuts were the branch lines that provided connections to the nations rural communities, but along the way a handful of major connections were shortened and great stations like Marylebone were threatened.
In its heyday Uckfield sat proudly as a major stop along the Wealden line that ran from Lewes to Tunbridge wells. But, in the 1950’s a new motorway project at Lewes lead to the closure of the final 7 miles of track, transforming a once dignified Victorian station into an isolated terminus moments from the south coast and miles from London.

Like many lines serving towns of this size, the stations had an important impact on the town centre. While serving their obvious function as a direct connection to the outside world, stations like Uckfield sat in the centre of the town and were, in many ways, the keystone of the town’s public space. In some cases change of use have been sensitive and hotels or tourist boards have taken over. But, in many more cases the stations have been lost all together and the towns left with a scar at their centre.

Today, due to growing passenger numbers and soaring fuel costs Britain’s railways are undergoing a renaissance, and the reinstatement of old connections is becoming a real possibility. In the case of Lewes – Uckfield the connection would provide a second route from London to Brighton and in doing so reinvigorate Uckfields town centre.

This proposal situates its self in this promising future with a station on an historic site at the heart of town rich in railway heritage. In its undulating roof-scape and civic ticket hall the new station at Uckfield looks back to its Victorian ancestry and forward to a new chapter for Britain’s railway.

Studio 5 , 2008/2009
Tutors: Nina Lundvall and James Payne
Guest Critics: John Glew and Peter St.John

The team consisting of Anna Crosby, Joni Steiner and Aleks Catina – the Hackney Good Wheelers – took part in the 2009 part of the Mongol Rally, a yearly event which supports the Christina Noble Children Foundation, a charity that works very hard and efficient to improve the lives of Mongolian street children.

This talk is a picture-show of this trip, introducing landscapes, people and situations we have encountered on the way. For all friends, architectural offices, supportive and generous individuals and firms who supported us and the cause this is a visual and informally narrated thank-you from the Hackney Good Wheelers, and the children who benefited from your support.

Please visit our webpage to find out more at hackneygoodwheelers.co.uk.

Rose has been teaching at London Met’ and its predecessors, the Polytechnic and then the University of North London, since 1989. Her demand that drawing is an explorative act, both visceral and poetic as well as rigorous and exacting, has introduced generations of students to a perception of space beyond measurement and a school of thinking through drawing.

This has been most explicit in working with foundation and first year students. But Rose has worked with design studios and units, on field-trips and workshops throughout the department, reminding students of the value of standing back and looking again, differently.

Colourspace, one of Rose’s most consistently inspiring teaching programmes, prompted a different output through a combination of colour theory, studies of paintings, buildings and places, articulating students’ spatial imagination and sensitivity to colour and material.

Rose’s visual thinking, her seeing through drawing and painting, is now showing here everywhere in the department, and on show in this exhibition. We see how she sees and can make tenuous, teasing connections to the work that she has done with students over those years. Perhaps too, it marks a transition from teacher back to artist and to many more places and spaces to be revealed.