Colin O'Brien lecture

Retrospective Images
Thursday 3rd April
6.30pm in the Forum

Colin O’Brien will be presenting his ‘Retrospective Images’: a series of photographs which take a nostalgic look back at life and span a period of over 50 years. The urban landscapes capture people off-guard in run-down buildings and streets, which have long since been cleaned up or demolished. Children play, women chat, men drink and play darts in seedy pubs, couples stroll, arm-in-arm on Sundays in the City.

The commonplace is so often overlooked, but it could be argued that many of O’Brien’s photographs are the most important documentation of a way of life that has long since ceased to exist. For O’Brien, the street becomes his stage and the passing scene is compared to scenes in a play where people talk, dance, mime and perform to an unseen audience.

The ‘Retrospective Images’ are oddly timeless with no sense of place and a telling beauty and eloquence. They encapsulate connections and misconnections between subjects, many of those, societies “outsiders”. O’Brien lives in Hackney and many of his pictures are taken in and around that area.

For more information about Colin O’Brien, see: www.colinobrien.co.uk

Election Results

Easter break is now coming to an end and we all face into the last couple of months with renewed vigour and determination, I’m sure.

MA&DE’s elections before the break have brought a new team together to carry MA&DE on into next year and continue to develop it.

The results are as follows:

Core MA&DE Team -

PG Chair: Caroline Khoo, 4th Year

PG Vice-Chair: Tabitha Pope, 4th Year

UG Chair: Linda Bjorling, 1st Year

PR: Josh Williams, 4th Year

PR/Admin: Emma Ellis, 2nd Year

Admin/Treasurer: Anna Kerrane, 4th Year

Extended MA&DE team -

Vicky Summers, Aasan Abbas, William Fairminer, Arman Borhani, Edourd Rochet, Kevin Ega-Bourgeois, Charlotte Khatso, Zara Agha, Pavol and Luke Royffe.

Raphael

We would like to express our sadness at the tragic death of classmate Raphael Pennekamp, a keen contributor to MA&DE. His enthusiasm and passion were seemingly unending, and MA&DE’s recent discussion series “The interior as background to life” was entirely thanks to him. He will be greatly missed by many throughout the school.

MA&DE, the annual elections and you

MA&DE has grown from a small student initiative, which came into being over a drink in a pub, into an active student architecture society. It has been a brilliant year, but we, that is the people filling the “official” positions as Chair, Secretary, Treasurer and PR, think it’s time to make way for new people. Some of us are leaving architecture education for good this summer to enter the “real world”, whilst some will continue at DASD and may try out a different role with MA&DE…

So, without further ado (and before we drift into deep nostalgia), we’d like to announce the MA&DE elections! If you enjoy organising events, liaising between people and putting on socials, then get involved. You can stand for one of the five “official” positions or propose a new job.

Through being part of the MA&DE team, you will get to meet interesting people from the architecture world, plus any position will look good on your CV – but of course, these should not be the only reasons you sign up to the team. You should also be reasonably committed as the positions need to be filled until the following elections in Celebration Week next year. No worries though - the work that is involved is good fun and definitely rewarding.

If you have any questions regarding the “official” positions, please do contact the relevant person:

Postgraduate chair – Stef Rhodes (stefrhodes [at] gmail.com)
Undergraduate chair
Job: Lectures, coordinating the different events, liaising between the school and the society

Postgraduate secretary – Anna Kerrane (anna.kerrane [at] gmail.com)
Undergraduate secretary – Nicky Bruun-Meyer (nib0200 [at] londonmet.ac.uk)
Job: Organising the society meetings, taking the notes, liaising between the school and the students, writing postings on the MA&DE blog and keeping the Facebook group up-to-date

Treasurer – Christian Dimbleby (cpd0014 [at] londonmet.ac.uk)
Job: Liaising between the university and the society and managing the money

PR - Kat Davis (kat.s.davis [at] gmail.com)
Job: Lectures, posters, getting the MA&DE message out there and writing postings on the MA&DE blog

We’ve actually not stuck to these job descriptions - they are more of a general guidance. MA&DE tends to work as a team, with everyone being involved in pretty much everything at some point!

In addition, there have been many more people beyond these “official roles” that have organised specific events within the MA&DE structure. These have included the cinema nights and the MA&DE public seminars. There have also been an important group of people involved with the lectures, poster making and helping the socials to happen, so you’re not alone.

Please let us know under made.in.spring [at] gmail.com or via the election box on the MA&DE board if you are interested in a position by midday, Tuesday 11th of March. The elections will take place at one o’clock at Spring House (location tbc). Anyone who can’t make it in person but would like to stand for a position can send a representative. And again… if you have any questions, please get in touch with us at made.in.spring [at] gmail.com.

Yours truly,

The MA&DE team 2007/08.

Confusing Celebrations!

MA&DE would like to thank you all for a really great night at BarCosa last Thursday, but also apologise for the confusion surrounding the location…especially if any of you didn’t get the message that it had moved… (we hope not!)

Many of you saw the studios slowly transforming into a party room over the course of the evening, and we hope you were as excited as us about the idea of school not being just about work for an evening!!!

However, communication & bureaucracy let us down, and despite having received permission from all of the University bodies who we were told to, it transpired that there were some outstanding permissions that were necessary in order for us to hold our event in the school…

Unfortunately, it was only during the lecture, when the room was ready, the beer was chilled and the dj’s had begun warming up, that an official from the University arrived unannounced to give us the bad news….

So, a special thank you to Abby at BarCosa for accommodating us at such short notice (and yes, we were all very impressed with that final blast of the speakers at the end of the night!)

A big thank you also to Tabitha and Matt for the music, and to xxxx who became our official paparazzo for the night!

We do still hope to hold a party in school for you at some stage towards the end of the year, now that we’re fully aware of the requirements… So dj’s and party planners… keep coming forward!!

Celebration Week is all over now, and it’s heads down for the next few weeks before the Easter Crits that so many of us have looming… but don’t forget the Elections coming up on Tuesday the 11th…