Architecture UK

Martin Rein-Cano will be presenting the Superkilen project by TOPOTEK 1, a public park in the culturally diverse neighbourhood of Nørrebro, Copenhagen. As a reflection and celebration of the neighbourhood’s heterogeneity, a collection of foreign objects representing over 50 nationalities allow the reality of diversity to be spectacled, representing the identities of the community’s migrant backgrounds in Danish public space.

Founded in 1996, Martin Rein-Cano will present TOPOTEK 1 projects from the past 20 years, with a focus on the design of urban open spaces. Based on a critical understanding of immanent realities, the search for conceptual approaches leads him to decided statements concerning the urban context.

Mike will be discussing his architecture book design work developed over the last few years, as well as ongoing research into the histories and theories of the architecture book canon. Through an exploration of artists’ books, topological texts, cybernetic and ergodic literatures, sequential art and graphic novels, visual language and digital post-print medias, the established role of the book in/as a work of architecture is opened up and its futures speculated upon.

Mike Aling is a senior lecturer at the University of Greenwich Department of Architecture and Landscape, where he is Design Co-ordinator of the MArch Architecture programme.

Rory Olcayto looks at the highs and lows of architectural journalism at the world’s most important architecture magazine.

Rory is an award-winning journalist and critic and editor of the Architects’ Journal. Before his career in journalism, Rory studied architecture at the University of Strathclyde, worked in practice in Glasgow, Liege and Istanbul, and as a designer in the videogames industry. He also led a first-year design studio at Strathclyde University for two years and today is a guest critic at a number of UK and Irish universities. Rory is a regular commentator on radio and television, and in national newspapers, and regularly speaks at industry events.

Liz Harrison and Fran Cottell will talk about the work they have on display in the Stephen Lawrence Gallery in the context of their practices. Both artists use the concept of architecture as image/object, both in the work’s format, its use as site specific space and as a container for metaphor. The work specifically uses the notion of the home as a private container and as a symbol for ones existence, behavior, change, desires, fears and stuff. They have previously collaborated on ‘Concrete Dreams: art, architecture and social space’ APT Gallery, London 2008 and ‘when I get home I hope’, South London Gallery, 2013.

Days after Zaha Hadid became the first woman to receive the RIBA Gold Medal, she was panned in the media for her questionable choice of clients – Middle East rulers and Russian oligarchs. The inference was she is complicit in the abuses of those she works for. Why is it so much more damning to be creating architecture for an authoritarian regime than to be filling up our tanks with their petrol? What would have happened if some of the greatest architects in our history had refused to work for an autocratic pope or emperor?

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