Dalibor Vesely 1934-2015

Late in his career DALIBOR VESELY was Honorary Professorial Fellow at Manchester School of Architecture, during which time he contributed to the MA A+U course. We are therefore saddened to hear of his recent death and as a tribute post below the concluding section of David Leatherbarrow's obituary which has been published in Architectural Research Quarterly and the Journal of Architectural Education.

"When Vesely’s major work, Architecture in an Age of Divided Representation: creativity in the shadow of production was released in 2004, it was announced as a long-awaited book. Its genesis and development were concurrent with the Cambridge teaching and echoed that coupling of the productive and philosophical dimensions of architecture. Many of the book’s key concepts—human situations, the tension between embodiment and articulation, communicative movement, and so on—where equally apposite to project making and historical-philosophical study. It was a well-received book, also widely-read. Vesely was particularly pleased to see it appear in Czech translation.

Among the many awards and honors he received throughout his life a few were personally very significant. In 2005 he was recipient of the Bruno Zevi Book Award granted by the International Committee of Architectural Critics. One year later the Royal Institute of British Architects honored him with the Annie Spink Award for Excellence in Architectural Education. And in 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of the R.I.B.A.

Vesely expressed pride in the fact that he was raised in a Catholic country, although he never practiced that religion in his adult years. He once asked this note’s author if he believed in God. Limiting the ensuing pause to no more than a few moments he answered his own question with the observation that a world as rich and beautiful as ours makes one wonder. . . While the subject of transcendence, or what he called primary order, occupied his attention for years and was addressed in a number of his writings, he was no less concerned with secularization. The shelves of books in his large personal library that were dedicated to religion and myth were aligned with those that addressed the history of science and the philosophy of technology."

Where are they now? At 26 miles and 385 yards!

2012 MA A+U graduate Rajinder Matharu recently successfully completed the Manchester Marathon. Raj was running to raise funds for his friend Josh to help him represent Team GB in wheelchair tennis at Tokyo 2020. You can help support Josh by donating here

https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/josh15

Our Friends in the North: University of Bath Urban Design Workshop April 20-24

This week MA A+U welcomes M.Arch students from the University of Bath who are participating in a week long Urban Design Workshop for a site stretching out from the NOMA 53 development site along the Irk Valley in Manchester. They will complete their northern visit with an expedition to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Hepworth, Wakefield and Park Hill, Sheffield.

Architecture + Urbanism recommends 'The Future of NOMA 53'

The Future of NOMA 53

Presentation, walking tour & creative ideas workshop with the NOMA 53 development team

You are invited to join STREET NW to explore one of Manchester's largest city centre regeneration masterplans. The event will include a presentation of the NOMA 53 masterplan vision, an exclusive tour of One Angel Square & the surrounding Co-Operative Hermes Estate, followed by an ideas workshop, where you can help shape the future of NOMA 530.

WHO: Students who are studying in the fields of Planning, Urban Design, Architecture and Landscape Architecture

WHEN & WHERE: 29th April 2015 Meet outside One Angel Square, NOMA At 17.50 for 18.00 start

BOOK: RSVP to street-north-west@urban-design-group.org.uk Please include your university and course details. Places are limited and allocated on a first come first served basis.

For more info, to join or leave our mailing list please contact: street-north-west@urban-design-group.org.uk

Architecture + Urbanism recommends 'Phenomenologies of the City'

Another volume in the Ashgate Studies in Architecture series (edited by Eamonn Canniffe) has recently been published

PHENOMENOLOGIES OF THE CITY: STUDIES IN THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ARCHITECTURE

Edited by Dr Henriette Steiner (University of Copenhagen) and Dr Maximilian Sternberg (University of Cambridge)

This edited volume volume presents a synthetic overview of recent thinking on architecture, the built environment and urban culture that draws on the insights of phenomenology. It gathers an international group of leading scholars, many of them graduates or former members of the Architecture Department in Cambridge, who have explored the relationship of philosophy and architecture in a wide range of historical and geographic contexts. The book focuses on the new perspectives that may be gained from phenomenology specifically in relation to understanding the cultural and ethical challenges of today’s urban environment.

The most well-known publications on architectural phenomenology remain those of a previous generation of scholars who published their works over thirty years ago, such as Christian Norberg Schulz’s Genius Loci (1980), Gaston Bachelard’s La poétique de l’espace (1958) and Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s Experiencing Architecture (1959). The achievement of this first generation of architectural phenomenologists was to bring to the fore the multiplicity of aspects involved in the individual encounter with a particular architectural context, opening the depth of cultural, bodily and imaginary elements. However, these earlier authors have also tended to sanction romanticised preoccupations with individual spiritual experience and personal poetic imagination. As a consequence, phenomenology in architecture has neglected the social and shared aspects of the encounter with the built environment and with the city that are so critical to the discipline of architecture. The focus of this book is therefore exploring how phenomenology can be developed in architectural thinking in relation to the more collective domain of the city, its settings, politics and culture. In this way the essays collected in this book show how architectural thinking transforms phenomenology in order to generate new insights of relevance to ongoing ethical and cultural concerns in architecture and urbanism.

Alumni Loyalty Discount 2015-16

MA A+U full time (12 months) or part time (24 months) modes are two of the routes eligible for a 20% discount on fees for post graduate taught courses being offered to MMU Alumni.

Details available from the Funding and Financial Support pages of the MMU Postgraduate Study site

'Studying for a taught postgraduate degree can increase your skills and knowledge in your chosen profession making you more employable and a more attractive candidate to employers. In today’s climate, it is increasingly important for your CV to stand out and a taught postgraduate qualification can be a way of achieving this. We want all our graduates to have the best possible chance of maximising their career success. Our Alumni Loyalty Discount reduces the burden of further tuition fees and encourages our undergraduates into further study. Eligible alumni receive a 20% discount on their taught postgraduate tuition fees when they enrol as a new student on one of our eligible full-time or part-time postgraduate taught courses starting in September 2015*.'

Vice-Chancellor's International Scholarship

MA A+U student Honghao Zeng is pictured receiving his Vice-Chancellor's International Scholarship certificate from Manchester Metropolitan University Vice-Chancellor Professor John Brooks at a recent celebratory event.

The deadline for application for the 2015-16 MMU Vice-Chancellor International Scholarships for Taught Postgraduate programmes such as MA A+U is June 30 2015.