The AA’s Public Programme is an extensive series of public events dedicated to contemporary architectural culture: exhibitions, members’ events, lectures, seminars, conferences, book launches and publications.

Each year architectural theorists and practitioners, writers, performing artists, musicians and art historians are invited to speak at the AA. Whether as part of the series of Evening Lectures or Visiting Theory Seminars or Artist Talks, these events bring together different parts of the school and form an essential component of an AA education.

The AA exhibition programme celebrates the work of practices whose early cutting-edge approach to design has begun to manifest itself, in the process firmly establishing these firms at the forefront of their professions. Engineers Adams Kara Taylor (AKT) worked alongside some of the world’s most influential architects on major projects and have been instrumental in pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Architect and former AA tutor Frank Barkow brought the work of his practice Barkow Leibinger to the AA. The exhibition transformed the AA Gallery into a ‘grotto’ landscape of cut steel tubes, formed using a state-of-the-art revolving laser-cutting process. The AA’s exhibition year began with a very different vision: ‘Future Non-Future’ brought together architectural projects for London which all remain unbuilt. Alongside AA Gallery shows, the exhibition programme as usual highlighted school work, starting with an exhibition by students awarded the prestigious AA Diploma Honours in 2007/08. Others included Crossings, a bridge-building project for Hooke Park in Dorset; and Where the Wild things are (Inter 7’s unit trip to the Galapagos Islands).

A number of titles produced this year through AA Publications and the Print Studio have appeared in tandem with major AA exhibitions. These include Barkow Leibinger’s Atlas of Fabrication; and 311 Methods, the catalogue for Pierre Hebbelinck’s exhibition, edited by Cédric Libert. Much of the output of AA Publications focused on the work of students and staff in the school: including extending the AA Agendas series with Articulated Grounds: Mediating Environment and Culture, edited by Anne Save de Beaurecueil and Franklin Lee and Environmental Tectonics, from the Environment, Ecology and Sustainability Research Cluster curated by Werner Gaiser and Steve Hardy. As always, the end of the year is marked with the publication of the annual AA Book: Projects Review 2009, documenting, above all else, projects selected from across the school. The AA Words Series has continued with Having Words by Denise Scott Brown and The Poetics of a Wall Projection by Jan Turnovsky, translated and introduced by Kent Kleinman. AA Files was not only successfully remodelled and reinvigorated this year but 2008/09 also saw the AA’s ‘journal of record’ publish its first olfactory item; launch its digitised back catalogue for AA members; and run an AA Files Lecture series for the first time.

The Public Programme also runs conferences, colloquia and symposiums throughout the year. Roemer van Toorn gave a keynote address, ‘Learning from Free Indirect Discourse: Aesthetics as a Form of Politics’ at this year’s AA PhD Dialogues, ideology in transparency, in which ten PhD candidates from six schools took part. A joint AA/RIBA symposium, Le Corbusier At The AA, accompanied an exhibition of the same name. The symposium Thrilling Wonder Stories: Speculative futures for an alternate present was streamed live on tomorrowsthoughtstoday and live-blogged. The event was organised by Liam Young (AA Inter 7) and Geoff Manaugh, whose book The BLDGBLOG Book was launched at the AA Bookshop in one of their many special events.

This is only a tiny taste of the AA’s Public Programme – next year’s events will be announced here in the near future.