The ‘Concrete Geometeries’ Research Cluster seeks submissions of work that explore the relationship between spatial form and social or aesthetic processes.

Deadline: 12 April     

For further information see www.concrete-geometries.net

Publication details
Paperback: 268 pages
Publisher: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing (8 Dec 2009)
ISBN-10: 383833051X
ISBN-13: 978-3838330518

Price: €79,00/£72.00/$117.00/?12,091

Publication Abstract
The latest forms of site-specific and digital art have emerged from artists’ interest in new relationships between physical and virtual spaces, as inspired by the contemporary interdisciplinary understanding of space as an uncontrollably changing informational substance. Such developments necessitate new spatial research strategies for advancing site-specific art. The present study develops pioneering methodologies for enabling that advancement. The existing modes of digital visualisation, site-specificity, virtual and mixed realities in art, design and science are radically challenged, as the built boundaries of architecture ‘unfold’ to reveal a paradoxical hybrid space in a site-specific virtual environment. The digital boundaries of architecture are revealed to be highly inconsistent, undermining the solidity and continuity of built space and our perception of it. Such irregularity exposes the inherent abstraction and inconsistencies that occur in the interchanges between the binary, numerical and graphic levels of digital visualisation systems. This book is particularly useful to artists, architects and professionals who engage with digital visualisation and the related fields.

Luca Peralta Studio – Design & Consulting (directed by Luca Peralta DRL’00) will be in charge of all design phases and the direction/supervision of the construction for a kindergarten project, a piazza, a small recreational park and an outdoor sports centre. The competition is sponsored by the Department for Landscape Architecture, Architecture and Contemporary Art of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
For more information, see
http://europaconcorsi.com/projects/111939-Terra-Madre http://www.sensicontemporanei.it/qi/

A recent project by Sanjeev Shankar, Jugaad has been selected for the Emerging Architecture awards by Architectural Review.

The exhibition is currently on at RIBA.
See http://www.sanjeevshankar.com/jugaad.html

I am helping promote an international student competition to design a music studio on behalf of Wyclef Jean’s charity Yéle Haiti. Established by John McAslan + Partners and Allied London, this new Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) competition is to design a music studio in Cité Soleil (Port-au-Prince), Haiti. Please find more in formation of this project below.

The competition is open to secondary/high school and university/college students studying architecture and design-related subjects from around the world and we are currently trying to get as many students as possible involved. Please could you forward this information to any students that you think would be interested in the competition or post on any relevant forums/ notice boards that could spark an interest in the initiative.

The AAInter10 Coral Gardens projects have been exhibited in Shelter DUBAI and
the event has been featured in The National Dubai, the main English-language newspaper.

See link for full article:
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091221/NATIONAL/712209909

AA students, staff and graduates participated in a major international conference and publication documenting the condition of contemporary architecture and urbanism.

DRL co-directors Theo Spyropolous and Yusuke Obuchi presented 'Adaptive Ecologies', illustrated with current and recent DRL thesis design projects related to a four-year 'parametric urbanism' design agenda explored by the programme. Serie Architects (Chris Lee Dip 6 and Kapil Gupta AAGDG '98)) presented Xian Horticultural Masterplan.

Other AA participants include DRL co-director Patrik Schumacher, whose project for a new Istanbul masterplan is presented; and Diploma Unit 14 and Histories & Theories tutor Pier Vittorio Aureli's 'Stop City' project.

Work by frequent AA visitors Hernan Diaz Alonzo, Bil Macdonald and Jesse Reiser is also included as is the work of AA graduates or former tutors, including Ben Van Berkel, Ken Yeang, Bill Dunster, Rem Koolhaas and Yosoke Hayano and Alejandro Zaera-Polo.

Serie (Chris Lee Dip 6 Unit Master/ AA Projective Cities Director and Kapil Gupta AAGDG '98) has won an invited design competition for a middle-income housing project in Bratislava. Serie saw off strong competition from an impressive shortlist that includes Neuteling Reidijk and Querkraft. Construction is expected to begin in 2010. More on www.serie.co.uk

'A shopping mall where you can see the clouds', project by ecoLogicStudio
(co-founded Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, AAInter10 tutors), has been
selected as part of Italian Oxygen competition by Abitare.

An existing salt mine sits as a scar on the Galapagos Landscape. Once the natural habitat of Flamingos, this salt lake has long been a desolate space ravaged by the nearby restaurant industry. The Galapagos is caught between its massive contribution to the Ecuadorian economy and its value as a historic wilderness.

This project is conceived of as a provocation and speculation on how these two demands may be hybridised as an alternative to the typical conservationist practices applied across the islands. The two traditionally mutually exclusive programmes of salt farming and Flamingo habitat are re imagined as a new form of symbiotic designed ecology; a pink wonderland, built from colored bacteria and salt crystallisation, dissolving and reshaping itself with seasonal and evaporative cycles. The building becomes an ecosystem in itself, completely embedded in the context that surrounds it.

Formed from fine webs of nylon fibers held in an aluminum frame, this strange string instrument allows the salt farming process to be drawn up out of the lake, returning it to the endemic flamingos while at the same time ensuring the continuation of a vital local industry. Using just capillary action, salt water from the lake crystallises on the tension strings forming glistening, translucent enclosures. It encrusts the infrastructure of a flamingo observation hide and solidifies into a harvestable field ready to be scraped clean by miners.

The project has been developed through scale models that were used as host structures for an in depth series of crystallisation experiments. Material erosion, spatial qualities, structurally capacity and evaporative cycles were all determined through physical testing. The architecture and its physical models grew slowly across time, emerging from the salt waters they were immersed in, to become fully developed crystalline structures.

The Galapagos is an ecology in crisis. The project is positioned as part documentary, part science fiction offering both a rigorous technical study and a speculative near future wilderness. An evolving future for the islands is imagined and it demands an evolved and mutated architecture.
Wen Ying The

This capacity to be wildly imaginative but at the same time technically rigorous and utterly believable is what gives the project its critical edge. It is an important project, creatively involving itself in a most pertinent debate.
Abridged comment on project from Kate Davies and Liam Young, Unit tutors
 
Read more on the RIBA site.

Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, ecoLogicStudio + Inter 10 masters, complete 'eco-roofScape' project for Carosello Shopping Mall, in Milan

More on ecologicstudio.com

Liam Young from Tomorrows Thoughts Today and AA Inter 7 is curating an exhibition and lecture on the work by the maverick ‘architect’ Mas Yendo.

Salvaged from the wreckage, Mas’ artifacts are evidence of a near future where labyrinthine, steel filaments mesh together like roots of an overgrown tree, mechanical elements bulge from decrepit structures, naked pipes wrap around each other in bondage. Loose wires, rusted steel panels, chipped paint, layered walls and the assimilation of organic entity and machine capture the essence of this city. Born in 1957 in Tokyo, Japan, his experimental works have been compiled in his monograph Ironic Diversions, published by Springer/Wien through Lebbeus Woods’  Research Institute of Experimental Architecture. He currently lives and works in New York City.

The exhibition titled E-X PROSTHESIS is a collection of his extraordinary objects made from hacked military model kits and accompanying graphite drawings. Mas will give a lecture at 6.30 in the UCL Darwin Lecture Hall before opening the exhibition in the Bartlett School of Architecture Lobby Gallery.

Event details can be found on www.tomorrowsthoughtstoday.com
See also www.masyendo.org

This two-day conference on Developing Human Capital for Sustainable Economies will be held from 27 to 28 May 2010 in the 'green' city of Karlsruhe, Germany. This event will bring together educationists, policy makers, senior executives of public and private organisations, human capital practitioners, economists, members of international development agencies and other relevant stakeholders to discuss key emerging issues including: global warming and the emergence of the green economies; how is the transformation from high to low carbon economies impacting human capital management; and effective initiatives needed to develop and manage human capital for sustainable economies.

Further to the knowledge sharing on greening human capital; the upcoming event also provides an excellent networking opportunity with education institutions, international agencies, governmental and non-governmental institutions, private organisations and sustainable development practitioners in Europe and beyond.

For further information, please see http://www.etechgermany.com or email mail@etechgermany.com

Do you Sketchmob?
Drawing in the galleries at the Victoria & Albert Museum

A feast of drawing and good company to toast the backside of 2009. Invite friends. Look out for new 2010 dates on the site. Pictures, drawings, and location photos of previous Mob meetings at www.sketchmob.co.uk

The V&A is considered to be the greatest design museum in the world and its galleries house the most varied and fascinating objects. Meet on the steps of the main entrance, Cromwell Road at 6.45 for a couple of hours sketching then a quick review of the work. Optional drink afterwards. Bring a sketchbook, ideally tonal/coloured paper, coloured pencils, etc. but no dusty materials like charcoal. No previous experience needed.

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AA LU and H&T tutor Douglas Spencer lectures on AA Landscape Urbanism: A Renewed Praxis at Trento University, Italy

Considering a range of contemporary urban conditions operating outside those of the discipline's original North American and Westernised telos of the 'post-industrial' and 'post-urban', in this lecture Douglas Spencer will argue for a critically oriented renewal of Landscape Urbanism's theory and practice.

Ahmad Sukkar (AA DRL 2006) took part in Syrian Architecture Awards Exhibition at Istanbul Technical University, 9–11 November with two entries.
He was finalist with his entry to DRLTEN, Voronoi Pavilion, 2007; and his entry to Sham Spiritual Oasis entitled as Dal Lam Ra’ Universal Sections in 2008 received a citation. The exhibition organisers are the Order of Syrian Engineers and Architects and the Chamber of Architects of Turkey Istanbul Metropolitan Branch.

The workshop will be followed by a roundtable discussion in Linz on
Thursday 19 November and a lecture on Artificial ecologies at the
Univeristy of Applied Arts in Vienna on Friday 20 November at 2.00

http://www.strategies-research.ufg.ac.at/