A blog from the
MA Architecture + Urbanism course
at the Manchester School of Architecture
The MA Architecture + Urbanism course is the Manchester School of Architecture's taught postgraduate course which conducts research into how global cultural and economic forces influence contemporary cities. The design, functioning and future of urban situations is explored in written, drawn and modelled work which builds on the legacy of twentieth century urban theory and is directed towards the development of sustainable cities.
On Friday 22 January 2016 the Manchester School of Architecture is pleased to host a lecture by the Italian architect MASSIMILIANO FUKSAS
INTRODUCTION
Studio Fuksas, led by Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, www.fuksas.com is an international architectural practice with offices in Rome (since 1967), Paris (since 1989) and Shenzhen (since 2008). With built projects across Europe, Asia and North America, Studio Fuksas is characterized by an innovative approach as well as interdisciplinary skills and experiences consolidated over three decades through the design of masterplans, offices, residential buildings, infrastructures, cultural centres, leisure centres, retail developments, hotels, shopping malls, public buildings, interior design and product design.
WHO IS IT FOR?
This is a FREE lecture organised by the Manchester School of Architecture. It is an open lecture for both students and members of the profession.
TICKETS
Please register on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/massimiliano-fuksas-lecture-tickets-20848551579
TIME
Friday 22 January 2016, 18:00 - 19:30
VENUE
4th FLOOR LECTURE THEATRE (403)
BENZIE BUILDING/CHATHAM BUILDING
MMU
This event has been made possible through the sponsorship of The Bradshaw Gass Trust.
MAXXI presents TRA/BETWEEN Arte e Architettura. Roma Interrotta | Piero Sartogo e gli artisti: two exhibitions in one that retrace the period of a new attention toward contemporary culture promoted at the end of the 1970s through the innovative activities of the Incontri Internazionali d’Arte. 17 April – 21 September 2014
Sala Carlo Scarpa and Sala Gian Ferrari
curated by Achille Bonito Oliva
ROMA INTERROTTA
Roma Interrotta is a re-edition of the 1978 exhibition presented at Trajan’s Market in Rome marked by the interdisciplinary approach to art expressed through the Incontri Internazionali d’Arte and conceived by Piero Sartogo. Piero Sartogo | Costantino Dardi | Antoine Grumbach | James Stirling | Paolo Portoghesi | Romaldo Giurgola | Robert Venturi | Colin Rowe | Michael Graves | Leon Krier | Aldo Rossi | Robert Krier
PIERO SARTOGO E GLI ARTISTI
This exhibition initiates a dialogue between art and architecture and also retraces the activities of the Incontri Internazionali d’Arte. Daniel Buren | Gianni Colombo | Joseph Kosuth | Fabio Mauri | Giulio Paolini
Periods of economic depression and lack of construction often lead to moments of reflection and reassessment in architecture, and the current European crisis is no exception. As in previous such periods modes of representation come to the fore and it is therefore no surprise that two great European architectural collections are currently hosting exhibitions focussing on architectural models.
In Frankfurt-am-Main, the German Architecture Museum is hosting Architectural Model: Tool, Fetish, Small Utopia from 25 May -16 September 2012 There is a short video on current techniques here
And in Rome MAXXI is hosting Modelli Models from 19 July - 2 April 2013 There is a short video (in Italian) on the exhibition here
Recent MA A+U graduate Kathryn Timmins will be holding a book launch and showing her project film on the Flaminio quarter in Rome at 7.00 pm on Wednesday 7 December in The Castle Hotel, Oldham Street, Manchester.
MA A+U student Kathryn Timmins has produced a new film as a part of her thesis study. This is an experiment to see how we can bridge the gap between the global building and the local area and consequently, create a missing relationship between the local indigenous people and global tourists who visit Zaha Hadid's MAXXI.
The final film prepared as a contribution to the University of Warwick conference THE POSTMODERN PALIMPSEST: NARRATING CONTEMPORARY ROME. The film was made by MA A+U students Preeya Vadgama, Kathryn Timmins, Angela Heaney and Chen Xu.
A further film prepared for the recent University of Warwick conference THE POSTMODERN PALIMPSEST: NARRATING CONTEMPORARY ROME. This film was made by Carrie Bayley, Luke Butcher and Rongxiao Han.
Another film for THE POSTMODERN PALIMPSEST: NARRATING CONTEMPORARY ROME conference at the University of Warwick. This film was made by Natalie MacBride, Jonas Komka, Christina Gregoriou and Jack O' Reilly
A film about contemporary Rome made by MA A+U students Laleh Fadaipour, Meliz Kusadali, Ketki Tendolkar, Supriya Pundlik and Angad Kasliwal for THE POSTMODERN PALIMPSEST: NARRATING CONTEMPORARY ROME conference at the University of Warwick
Rome is privileged in its relationship with Western history, constructed over layer after layer, from Roman to Fascist ‘empires’: in this sense the city constitutes the urban palimpsest. In postmodernity, the sprawl, the latest metamorphosis of Rome, overlaps with historical images of the capital to form a shapeless and fragmentary identity. The aim of this conference is to probe this latest level of the city, to discern the new and the old, and the links and reflections of one onto the other
Dr. Teresa Stoppani (University of Greenwich) will be leading a seminar for MA A+U at 10,30 am on Thursday 9 December.
Her new book Paradigm Islands: Manhattan and Venice, Discourses on the City has just been published by Routledge.
Concerning architecture and the city, built, imagined and narrated, this book focuses on Manhattan and Venice, but considers architecture as an intellectual and spatial process rather than a product. A critical look at the making of Manhattan and Venice provides a background to addressing the dynamic redefinition and making of space today. The gradual processes of adjustment, the making of a constantly changing dense space, the emphasis on forming rather than on figure, the incorporation of new forms and languages through their adaptation and transformation, make both Manhattan and Venice, in different ways, the ideal places to contextualize and address the issue of an architecture of the dynamic.
On the previous day Wednesday 8 December Dr. Stoppani will be speaking at a seminar at the University of Manchester on Piranesi's Erasures in G19 Mansfield Cooper Building at 4.00 pm
MA A+U paid a visit to the British School at Rome on November 3 to meet Dominic Holdaway (pictured centre) and discuss their film projects in connection with the conference The Postmodern Palimpsest: Narrating Contemporary Rome to be held on 26 February 2011 at the University of Warwick and jointly organised by Dominic and Filippo Trentin.
Until 28 November Zaha Hadid's MAXXI in Rome currently hosts an exhibition of the work of Luigi Moretti Entitled 'From Rationalism to Informalism' the exhibition traces the long and varied career of the architect through his works in Rome and elsewhere. Maristella Casciato and Bruno Reichlin discuss the exhibition in this short video.
Stirling's work has been interpreted by historians and critics in a number of varied, and often conflicting, ways. Some have seen it move through a series of eclectic modern styles; others have insisted that Stirling was a steadfast Modernist; while still others have proposed a fundamental break with Modernism in the mid-1960s. Stirling himself contributed to these diverse views through his own writings. Notes from the Archive, curated by Anthony Vidler, Dean and Professor of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union, will deepen our knowledge of Stirling's unique approach to the design process and demonstrate continuity in his work from his early days as a student to his final projects. According to Vidler, "This exhibition offers the potential for the re-evaluation of Stirling's career as an architect, revising the often contradictory assessment of his work from the 1960s on, through the evidence of the notebooks, sketches, presentation drawings, photographs, and original models the office."
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication authored by Anthony Vidler. The book will interpret the James Stirling/Michael Wilford fonds at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, as a living document of Stirling's attempts to broaden the language of Modernism while remaining faithful to his twin precepts of accommodation and association. While not a catalogue of the exhibition, this publication follows the themes of the exhibits and develops the interpretation of Stirling's contribution to the history and vocabulary of modern architecture that is presented in the show. It is published by the Yale Center for British Art and Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, in association with Yale University Press.
There will be an introductory meeting on Tuesday 28 September 2010 at 11.00 am in Chatham 712
What should the students bring?
A powerpoint presentation of 5 slides explaining their experience and ambitions for the course. Students should also have read some of the books listed in the bibliography on the right hand of this blog
It is anticipated that there will be a course field trip to Rome in the week commencing 1 November 2010. If in the meantime you have any other queries before your arrival please do not hesitate to contact me.
The film shows the funeral of Enrico Berlinguer in Piazza San Giovanni, Rome in 1984
The Call For Papers for the above named conference planned for 26 February 2011at the University of Warwick has now been issued by the organisers Dominic Holdaway and Filippo Trentin. msa Architecture + Urbanism students will be contributing short films to the conference based on the research undertaken during their fieldwork in November 2010. Conference announcement here
The Postmodern Palimpsest: Narrating Contemporary Rome
«What better place to await the end, to see if everything ceases or not?»
- Gore Vidal, in Roma
Keynote Speakers: Eamonn Canniffe (Manchester School of Architecture)
& Dr. John David Rhodes (Sussex University)
Saturday 26th February 2011, University of Warwick
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Rome of Federico Fellini’s eponymous film (1972), with suffocating traffic passing dazzling locations, and police brutality in enchanting piazzas; the Rome of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Mamma Roma (1962), with long tracks down shadowed streets and lively social gatherings masking potential violence: these images, though informed by converse ideologies, offer overlapping fragments of Rome’s ‘imagined geography’. The closing shots of Roma linger on dozens of mopeds fading into the distant black as they abandon the historical centre for an undefined urban sprawl. The sprawl, the latest metamorphosis of Rome, overlaps with historical images of the capital to form a shapeless identity, a fragmentary postmodernity.
Rome is privileged in its relationship with Western history, constructed over layer after layer, from Roman to Fascist ‘empires’: in this sense the city constitutes the urban palimpsest, with a deliberate void at the end. Rome is going through a time of change that needs to be theoretically framed: this conference aims to provide this through a multidisciplinary approach aiming to link together both urban and architectural analyses, and literary and cinematic ones. The classical palimpsest and the ‘modern’ Rome are overlapping with manifestations of the city’s postmodernity, such as the controversial new museum for the Ara Pacis (2006), the recent museum for contemporary art Maxxi (2010) and, in cinema and literature, ‘New Italian Epic’ depictions such as Il divo and Romanzo criminale. These images affirm a progression beyond Fellini and Pasolini’s ‘modernity’, though one with strikingly little critical attention. They aim to probe the above citation of Vidal, his conception of ‘the end’, and tentatively paint this as a movement towards post-history.
This conference will seek to address the following questions:
- Where present and past intersect and overlap synchronically, is it still possible to represent ‘reality’, or possible only to capture fragments of it?
- Can we still perceive the city as a ‘master narrative’, or do we need to challenge the notion of one city?
- How can the city be perceived in relation to Italian and to European landscapes?
- How does the image of Rome relate to contemporary global cities?
- How is this historical shift represented in global cultural products, and how do they redefine our perception?
Research methodologies are unlimited (urban & architectural studies, cultural theory, photographic and film studies, (art) history, comparative literature and anthropology etc.), and papers will be welcomed which engage with the city or with its representation.
Titles and abstracts (maximum of 300 words) for proposed papers should be sent in either English or Italian to the conference organizers, Dominic Holdaway (D.F.G.Holdaway@warwick.ac.uk) and Filippo Trentin (F.Trentin@warwick.ac.uk), by 30th September 2010.
In the forthcoming academic session msa MA students have been invited to contribute a film presentation in answer to the question “Can we still perceive the city as a ‘master narrative’, or do we need to challenge the notion of one city?’ The question has been asked by Dominic Holdaway and Filippo Trentin of the University of Warwick Humanities Research Centre in preparation for their conference “The Postmodern Palimpsest: Narrating Contemporary Rome” to be held at the University of Warwick in February 2011. Students will research the question and document their responses on film during a fieldtrip to Rome in October 2010.
Eamonn Canniffe leads the Architecture Research Centre and the MA in Architecture + Urbanism at the Manchester School of Architecture. He was educated in Architecture at Cambridge and Harvard Universities. In 1996 he held a Rome Scholarship in the Fine Arts at the British School at Rome. Between 1986 and 1998 he taught at the University of Manchester School of Architecture, and between 1998 and 2006 at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture. He is the author of Urban Ethic: Design in the Contemporary City (Routledge 2006) (Chinese edition 城市伦理--当代城市设计 2013) and The Politics of the Piazza: the history and meaning of the Italian square (Ashgate 2008). He is co-author (with Tom Jefferies) of Manchester Architecture Guide (1999) and (with Peter Blundell Jones) of Modern Architecture through Case Studies 1945-1990 (Architectural Press 2007), (Chinese edition 现代建筑的演变 1945--1990年 2009) (Spanish edition Modelos de la Arquitectura Moderna -Volumen II 1945-1990 2013). For a number of years he has served as Architecture Series Editor for Ashgate Publishing.
