MA&DE proudly presents...

...the MA&DE public debate series.

On three consecutive Tuesdays and, erhm, one Monday, Martina Geccelli, Florian Beigel, John Glew and Raphael Pennekamp will hold public seminars on "The interior as background for life". This Tuesday Martina Geccelli will present her work to start off the discussion, to which all are invited to contribute. We hope this format will promote a more open exchange of ideas between students, artists, tutors and visitors.

Do come and contribute!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

... and welcome back. We’re not going to talk about diets or fitness or any of that tripe. In fact, maybe we should just talk about tripe. Apparently, it's "delicious in a sandwich or just as part of your calorie controlled offal based diet". Hmmm.

Anyway, back to more architectural affairs and MA&DE - we've got more events, more ideas and marvellous things coming up for you in 2008. We'll be telling you what's up next in Spring House a jiffy...

Alex de Rijke lecture

Timber is the new concrete
Thursday 10th January

A critique of architecture practice today is that it is mostly driven by formal preoccupations, the endless quest for new form providing even ambitious architects with blinkers during the conceptual design process. A willful ignorance of the sustainable industrial revolution now underway in northern Europe is coupled with the attitude that recycling, renewable energy, low CO2 etc is generally considered (by the ‘avant-garde’) to be the site of duty, not dynamic design. Yet scientists, environmentalists and even politicians, the press and hence public know energy, waste management and ozone control to be the inevitable future…

De Rijke’s abbreviated synopsis of technology as the key driver of architecture is as follows:

the 17 and 18C was the era of brick,
the 19C was the era of the steel frame,
the 20C was the era of concrete,
as global energy crisis develops and CO2 emissions become legal issues:
the 21C will become the era of renewable timber.

dRMM aim to produce useful architecture that is a expression (and critique of) social and cultural production, using industrialised materials and processes. Their direct ‘Off the Shelf’ approach to (lateral) design has been systematically researched, taught and exhibited at the Architecture Association, London, and applied in practice since 1995 as dRMM London. The practice’s projects have been published widely and have received many awards for innovation and
achievement in architecture.

Project material research has recently focused on engineered timber and ETFE, which dRMM regard as the most interesting sustainable high-performance materials of the future. dRMM is a leader of the international field in the architectural exploitation of these materials, and is exploring the correlation between concept, context, and construction. Particular preoccupations of the practice lie in structural timber systems, the possibility of all-timber buildings, and economy of means.

CHRISTMAS SOCIAL @ BarCosa

This Thursday the 13th of December, MA&DE invite you and your friends to join us in celebrating the end of term at BarCosa.

There will be live music, and of course, the giving of prestigious snowflake award for the best decoration that you have 'MA&DE' for the Christmas tree. So, after Graham Haworth's lecture, make your way down the road and join your fellow students in saying goodbye to the Autumn term, and hello to the Christmas holidays!

A fun little competition

As you may have noticed, we at MA&DE decided to bring a bit of festive fun into your stressful lives at uni, and have put up a pretty Christmas Tree opposite the yellow board. The uni seems to have brought one in too - decorated in a vulgar array of gold and purple - we we know you can do better...

So, all you "creatives" get creative... get your scalpels and glues and papers and cards (for it 'tis the season to be jolly) and make something lovely. There'll be a fun prize for the most delightful, most ephemeral, most Nordic paper snowflake. So be sure to put your name on your decoration somewhere.

Announcements and prize-giving on Thursday at the social. Details coming soon... !

Coming soon...

... we have an especially tasty 'freshly MA&DE' lecture taking place at Spring House, which will be followed by the Christmas social.

Graham Haworth lecture

The Architecture of Engagement - Working in the Margins
Thursday, 13 December, 6.30pm

The architect’s role in the development of the sustainable city is often ambiguous. Traditional concerns of architectural style, taste and composition pre-occupy most good architects. The resulting designs whilst visually provocative, are often problematic, unable to survive the closer scrutiny of wider socio-economic, environmental and cultural imperatives.

Equally, a simple commitment to social well-being through technology, is prescribed by orthodox modernism, avoids those situations where architecture has to engage with less precise areas of reality. Architecture, as taught and published often deals only with abstract certainties and this ‘retreat’ is becoming increasingly unsustainable. The potential benefit of good architecture is denied to the wider population, and the product that we all get excited about in the media, actually probably influences less than 5% of all global construction leaving the question of who is responsible for the remaining 95% unanswered.

To be truly sustainable, architecture should be able to meet more objectives, satisfy more needs, be more appropriate, and achieve more relevance. If it is to contribute to meaningful improvements in the urban environment it must engage with the ‘junk’ of everyday reality and establish key values; values that are often generated as much by economics, social goals and politics as they are by design.

Upcoming events...

We have a number of lectures coming up in the next couple of weeks which we hope you will enjoy.

As part of the main Thursday lecture series, members of the Office for Subversive Architecture will be presenting their work and ideas tomorrow, Thursday November 15th. As usual, this will be at 6.30 in the Forum.

Following this, we have two very different Monday evening lectures on the 19th and 26th of November. These will be in Spring House, again at 6.30. The room is to be confirmed.

On the 19th, artist Christian Nold will be discussing his Biomapping projects (www.softhook.com) and on the 26th, Graham Bizley, who produces the regular "Solutions" page in Building Design magazine, discusses detailing in architecture

More details of these lectures can be found below.

And remember, if you haven't yet joined, please do send the e-mail detailed below - the more members we have, the more money we get from the Students Union, and the more we can do for you!!!

Graham Bizley

Why one thing, not another?
Monday, 26th November, 6.30pm

Graham Bizley is a partner of Prewett Bizley Architects and produces a regular feature in Building Design explaining the construction of a recent building. A book, Architecture In Detail collating 40 of these articles and will be published by the Architectural Press in November 2007.

Detailing is the process by which materials are brought into relation with one another. The choice of materials and the way they are assembled are not arbitrary. The designer is required to exercise value judgements, to give hierarchy to the issues of the project, identifying what is most appropriate in a given situation and weighing up the likely effects of different choices.

So how do we make these choices? Why do we choose one thing over another? Using projects from the book, historical examples and the work of Prewett Bizley the lecture will explore the relationship between the concept and realisation of a project, examining how an appropriate balance is found between technical issues, environmental concerns, economic constraints and the desires of the users.

Christian Nold

Emotion Mapping - recapturing the sensory commons
Monday, 19th November, 6.30pm

Bio Mapping is a research project exploring new ways in which we as individuals can make use of the information we are able to gather about our own bodies. In place of security technologies designed to control our behaviour, this project envisages new tools allowing people to selectively share and interpret their own bio data. By sharing this data we can construct maps visualising where we as a community feel stressed and excited. How will our perceptions of our community and environment change when we become aware of our own and each others intimate body states?