Architectural Association School of Architecture

Pavel Hladik and Filip Dubsky's practice is called Nolimat.
www.nolimat.com
 
The house was awarded by GRAND PRIX 2009 – first prize in category Family House. The competition is organised annually by the Society of Czech Architects and the Czech Chamber of Architects.
 
See: http://www.grandprix-architektu.cz/en/grandprix-architektu/current-exibition-cycle/awards/c1261
 
The weekend house is situated on a trapezoid site at the outskirt of the village in undulated Czech countryside. Requirements of investor on a small scale multipurpose private leisure centre enabled to create a 24-hectare living landscape on the whole plot. The idea of temporary used property is expressed in the form of a closed/open container. The house is divided into overlapping zones with their specific environmental requirements and therefore costum made features modulating environment.

public works' FRIDAY SESSIONS* are back!

Friday 18 September from 7.00 to 8.30 at the South London Gallery (SLG)
65 Peckham Road, London SE5

As part of public works' current project 'today's extension' for SLG's Beyond These Walls exhibition, public works is organising a Friday Session on the subject of gallery extensions.

While the past decade has seen a marked increase in off-site, community-based and outreach projects - the non-gallery based work of art organisations – numerous building projects have enlarged the architectural space of the galleries themselves. Both programmes seem fundamentally different. The off-site work is producing a complex network of social relations and temporary cultural projects across spaces, whereas the architectural extension creates a physical and permanent extension in one place.

This Friday Session looks at the current and possible relationship between those two forms of extension. How do they work together? Who is producing and using them? Where do they become visible? Is there a hierarchy between spaces? How can they be read and represented as one spatial strategy and construct?

The panel includes Margot Heller and Frances Williams from SLG, Natasha Vicars from Whitechapel gallery and Kathrin Böhm and Andreas Lang from public works.

public works will continue their mapping of SLG's various extensions in 2010, alongside public events and debates to frame the concept of extended extensions.

Go to www.publicworksgroup.net for more information

Sliding House by dRMM (principals Sadie Morgan, AA Council and Alex de Rijke, past External Examiner) has won several awards so far this year, including an RIBA East Award, and it is shortlisted for a Manser Medal, the winner to be announced at the RIBA Stirling Prize Dinner in October. The project is also in the running for a World Architecture Festival Award, as are two other dRMM projects, Clapham Manor Primary School and the Timber Stadium, exhibited at last year's AA exhibition 'Future Non-Future'. dRMM director Alex de Rijke describes the research project as 'setting new standards for the potential scale of carbon-negative timber structures'.

Abhishek Bij (MArch DRL) led the design team for shortlisted entry in Urban Design Competition, School of Planning and Architecture, New Campus, New Delhi. (http://spa.ac.in/)
As Associate Architect Design Plus (www.designplus.org.in) Abhishek led the design team for the above mentioned design competition. Of the 250+ entries that were submitted, 30 were exhibited at SPA, ITO campus in June.

For decades, School of Planning and Archihtecture has produced premiere architects in India with notable achievements at National and International levels in the Architectural Profession. With both partners at Design Plus also being SPA graduates, designing the new campus was more nostalgic for Design Plus.

Continuing from the theory and experiments at the DRL, Parametric Urbanism 3 by team BrownSheep the Studio Highlighted the important distinction between Urbanism and Urbanization, and proposed the Urban Ground. This is a model of urbanism that attempts to dilute the extremities between the natural and the human imposed context.
At the macro-level, the urban ground respects the once nature dominated skyline of Delhi and simultaneously the need for human intervention.
At the Meso-level, acknowledging the pressures exerted by the site’s morphology, the Urban Ground acts as an extension of the existing terrain, both as a blend or an additive layer.
This ground can be understood as a surface at the micro-level, that negotiates topography and accommodates functional deployments, performing as a roof, a ground, and occupiable space, depending on its own gradient and the variation in its thickness.

See http://urbanground-ab.blogspot.com/

2. Roaming Workshop - Sushant School of Art and Architecture and School of Planning and Architecture
A Dual Phase charette discussing the topics of Field and Topology as an Urban Planning and a Form Finding tool. Bringing on board ideas involving densification, stressing on developments of prototypes and consequent families as a module for the housing sector.
- held at Sushant School of Art and Architecture, Gurgaon from 26 Feb to 3 March 2009.
- scheduled at School of Planning and architecture, New Delhi in the last week of September (exact dates to be finalised).

The workshops were customised to fit regular curriculum. For SSAA the workshop dealt with Second and Fourth Year students for their respective Urban Design Studios. However, for SPA, the workshop targets the Housing Semester for year 4.

Ana Cocho (ex DRL student) presented her DRL team [An_D]'s project Emergency deployable at the international symposium File to factory: The design and fabrication of innovative forms in a continuum, at the CMA (Centre for Mediterranean Architecture), Chania, Crete, 4 September 2009

http://www.f2f-continuum.eu

Hajir Alttahir (AA member) was awarded a travel fellowship and second prize for her essay in the 2009 Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence.  The essay, Mesopotamian Peace Park, discussed the possible revival of sustainable vernacular architecture in the effort to rebuild Iraq, reverse the disappearance of the Mesopotamian Marshlands and re-house the indigenous refuge population.

 
 http://www.berkeleyprize.org/

Maria Fedorchenko (Course Master H&U Programme, HTS Studies) gave an invited lecture on Urban Diagnostics and Activation: Diagrammatic Strategies for Infrastructural Practices at the Main Architectural and Planning Administration of Moscow (GlavAPU) on 6 August 2009.
Linking her research project on non-linear exchanges between commercial and transportation systems with the study on experimental visual techniques, the lecture demonstrated the advantages of diagrammatic analysis for utilising hidden potentials of urban infrastructures, including activation of new transfer nodes and programmatic intensification of transit links. In order to account for the specifics of Russian planning practices, she also conducted a specialist workshop for the North-East Division of GlavAPU on applying advanced techniques for urban diagramming.

Diploma 11 graduate, Zhi Xiong Chan and fellow 2008 graduate Keita Tajima's collaborative building project to the Kjima publishing SD review
competition. The title of the project is DRAW.CUT.BUILD. and is a small building they designed and built after graduating from the AA. It has been shortlisted to feature in the exhibition in Tokyo (6–27 September) and Osaka (1–13 October).

The exhibition/competition will be judged by Toyo Ito and Chiba Manabu.
See Kjima publishing

Serie (Chris Lee, Dip 6 Unit Master/AA Projective Cities Director and Kapil Gupta AAGDG '98) and Plasma Studio (Eva Castro, LU Director and Holge Kehne, Dip 12 Unit Master) are included in Architects Review's selection of '10 Visionary Architects for a new decade'.

WORKING IN SERIES
Chris Lee & Kapil Gupta | Serie
The show will open in Shanghai and then tour to Beijing, Chengdu and London.
 
Venue: HKU Architecture Gallery Shanghai
Date: Monday 7 September 2009
Venue: architecture SH, Shanghai Study Centre, No.298, North Suzhou Road, Hong Kou District, Shanghai China 200085
Curator: Vivi Ying He (Architectural Curator, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong)
 
Working in Serie is an exhibition and publication bringing together seven projects by Serie. Led by Chris Lee and Kapil Gupta, Serie is a young architectural practice with offices in London, Mumbai, Beijing and Chengdu. Informed by the teachings and research of Chris Lee in the AA and Berlage Institute, the work of Serie speculates on the possibility of typology as an operative theory – a disciplinary knowledge and ‘general intellect’ – for the practice of architecture in a globalised world.

Read more at staedelschule.blogspot