Architecture + Urbanism recommends 'Some Reasons for Travelling to Italy'

Peter Wilson, a guest of the MA A+U course in 2012, has recently published his new book 'Some Reasons for Travelling to Italy' (AA Publications 2016). The publisher writes

"Italian cities have been points of reference for much of architect Peter Wilson’s professional life and the many reasons for visiting the country have long presented themselves as not just the easy list – holidays, food, architecture and culture. The grand tour is the most obvious of tropes for framing these things, but it can also serve as a useful vehicle for a more ingrained understanding into Italy’s wider architectural habitat and cultural mythology. This book, which accompanies an exhibition of the same title at the AA School in 2016, appears in the form of a latter-day Baedeker. But rather than a pragmatic itinerary, its content here offers an eclectic and idiosyncratic list of assorted reasons to head south, richly illustrated by Wilson’s own drawings and watercolours.

Some of the reasons for travelling to Italy include: to live cheaply, to travel with a consumptive relative, to look up, to abandon a bikini, to disappear, to make the Pope smile, to invent neo-classicism, to research Tarantism, to discover a telefonino on Etna and in an English garden in Naples."

Nothing could be more timely as MA A+U are close to finalising details of our own journey there ...

MMU Postgraduate Loan Scheme

Manchester Metropolitan University is offering postgraduate loans for taught masters courses including MA Architecture + Urbanism commencing in the 2016/17 academic year. This is in addition to the Alumni Loyalty Discount which will be available for the second year running in 2016/17. Three current MA A+U students benefit from the 20% discount on fees.

Details are available at www.mmu.ac.uk/pgloan

Architecture + Urbanism recommends "Time and Context"

TIME AND CONTEXT
A Continuity in Architecture Symposium

Tuesday 8 March 2016
2pm—6pm

Benzie 403 Manchester School of Art

Through a series of lectures from award winning practitioners and academics, 'Time and Context' seeks to understand the importance of context in relation to Architecture and the influence of time on a building, from its moment of conception through its iterations of adaptation.

Fred Scott was previously a visiting professor of Interior Architecture at Rhode Island School of Design and course leader for Interior Design at Kingston University. He is the author of On Altering Architecture, and will be discussing its suggested practice based on the interrogation of the context, to work with the everyday in flux with the ideal in an attempt to find elements of a theory of intervention.

Hana Loftus, one of the founders of HAT Projects a studio with specific focus on public and civic projects, is an expert in public participation in urban development. She will be discussing two projects; the RIBA award winning Jerwood Gallery on Hasting’s seafront, and the $20,000 house in Alabama, a prototype for families living in poverty.

Hugh Strange runs an award winning architecture practice based in London which has a keen interest in precise contextual responses to sensitive urban and rural sites. He will be discussing two projects, his personal residence Stange House and Studio, a low budget yet generous house designed to inhabit an old pub yard, and Architecture Archive, a new timber structure fit within the walls an existing barn.

Shin Egashira is an artist, architect and educator that has worked in Tokyo, Beijing and New York before coming to London in 1987. He is the founder and organizer of Koshirakura landscape workshop which he will be discussing. Within its 10 years of existence the workshop has served as an infrastructure for social sustainability and continues to document a post-agricultural community in transition.

Gianni Botsford, founder of Gianni Botsford Architects in 1996, will be discussing two projects. The RIBA award winning light house, a new build large family house on back land site in Notting Hill, London. Also Casa Kiké located in Costa Rico, a RIBA international award winning double pavilion.

The symposium is chaired by David Connor, architect and associate lecturer at Manchester School of Architecture whose award winning practice have worked on contextualised schemes all over the world.

Talks will start at 2PM with a series of refreshments throughout the afternoon. Panel discussions and wine will be the last session of the day starting at 5PM and concluding at 6PM.

Free Admission.

Ph.D Scholarship Funding: ARCHITECTURE + URBANISM

As part of MMU's £2.5m Ph.D. Scholarship Funding the Manchester School of Architecture seeks high quality research applications in the professions, practices, policies, histories and theories of architecture, planning and design.

Proposals may be based on individual research projects or on student-initiated projects in collaboration with a cultural organization outside of Higher Education.

Project aims and objectives

In an age where more people live in the city than the countryside, issues of architecture and its relationship to urbanism have never been more intellectually fascinating, socially vital and environmentally urgent.

The Architecture Research Group is involved in debates about the role of architecture in an age of economic globalisation, technological futurism, environmental and societal change which demand an approach to architectural studies that draws upon a diverse range of practices and plural forms of knowledge.

The research group is at the heart of an interdisciplinary project in which competing conceptions of design and development are brought into critical dialogue and we would welcome applications which fit with this remit. Central to this dialogue is the pursuit of research through which we aim to critically understand the evolution of design and development strategies, histories and theories of architecture and the wider social, economic and environmental processes shaping buildings, neighbourhoods, public spaces and cities. Drawing upon and connecting an energetic and diverse research community stretching across social sciences in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester and art and design research within the Manchester School of Art at the Manchester Metropolitan University, our research staff possess a unique and broad range of interests and expertise across theory and design, policy and practice.

Specific requirements of the project
Successful candidates will have training in the specified disciplines or cognate fields. normally with a high 2:1 or first class BA (Hons) and a merit or distinction at MA or equivalent professional experience.

Full scholarship and fees only awards for full time and part time study are available.

Proposals may be individually initiated, or collaborative and have interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives. They will respond to the area of research excellence defined within the activities of the Architecture Research Group in the Manchester School of Architecture.

You will be supervised by leading practitioners, theorists and historians. Be sure to contact Dr Myna Trustram (M.Trustram@mmu.ac.uk) before you make a formal application for advice and feedback on your proposal.

Student eligibility
UK, EU and international students

Deadline for applications 21 March 2016 (9.00 AM)

Informal enquiries can be made to:

Dr Myna Trustram
Email: m.trustram@mmu.ac.uk

Examples of recent postgraduate research are available on the following website ARCHITECTURE RESEARCH
http://architectureandgraduateresearch.blogspot.co.uk

Architecture + Urbanism recommends 'Rafael Moneo: Building Teaching Writing'

RAFAEL MONEO: BUILDING TEACHING WRITING

by Francisco Gonzalez de Canales and Nicholas Ray

(Yale University Press 2015)

The Spanish architect Rafael Moneo (b. 1937) has won numerous awards (including the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize), yet this publication is the first to offer a critical study of his career as a whole-not only his many built works and projects but also his contributions to teaching and his writings. The book begins with a comprehensive biography, covering Moneo's education, teaching appointments, and encounters with historians and architects in Europe and the United States, such as Peter Eisenman, Jorn Utzon, and Bruno Zevi. Also included is a discussion of some of the buildings that he has designed, notably the Prado Museum extension and Atocha Station in Madrid. The following section examines in more detail seven key buildings chosen to illustrate crucial developments in Moneo's thinking, from the Bankinter, Madrid, to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles. The last and most extensive section considers his architectural philosophy: his design approach, his idea of the canon, his theory of composition, his notion of form, and his confrontation with reality-in construction and context.

Architecture + Urbanism recommends 'Massimiliano Fuksas: 22 January 2016'

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.

http://bgtrust.org.uk/

Architecture + Urbanism recommends 'THE CITY THAT NEVER WAS'

The City That Never Was
Reconsidering the Speculative Nature of Contemporary Urbanization

Christopher Marcinkoski
(assistant professor of landscape architecture, University of Pennsylvania)


Published in December 2015 by Princeton Architectural Press this new book presents a comprehensive account of a contemporary urban phenomenon. The publishers write

'One of the most troubling consequences of the 2008 global financial collapse was the midstream abandonment of several large-scale speculative urban and suburban projects.The resulting scars on the landscape, large subdivisions with only marked-out plots and half-finished roads, are the subject of The City That NeverWas, an eye-opening look at what happens when development, particularly what the author calls "speculative urbanism," is out-of-sync with financial reality. Presenting historical and recent examples from around the world from the sprawl of the US Sun Belt and the unoccupied towns of western China, to the "ghost estates" of Ireland and focusing on case studies in Spain, Marcinkoski proposes an ecologically based model in place of the capricious economic and political factors that typically drive development today.
In addition to an in-depth theoretical investigation, the author includes a history of speculative development, as well as numerous design examples for more responsible urban growth.'