CONTINUITY IN ARCHITECTURE

Work by CiA year six students at this year’s Archaeology’s Places and Contemporary Uses Workshop, created in collaboration with students from the schools of architecture in Barcelona and Venice, and the School of Archaeology in Catania.

More pictures 

Archaeology’s Places and Contemporary Uses: Website

Dominic Roberts of CiA will be talking about Architecture and some uses of Tradition: Projects by Francis Roberts Architects at the Centre for North West Regional Studies, University of Lancaster on Saturday 7 November, 2009. The talk forms part of the Architecture of the North West study day.

Centre for North West Regional Studies

Picture: Summer Hill under construction. Francis Roberts Architects.

I looked forward with great excitement to the recent production of Euripide’s Andromaca at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. Not necessarily for the performance itself, which is a bit of a grim story especially for a non-Italian-speaking visitor, but for the manner in which the magnificent fixed stage set was to be utilised. The classical street scenes could surely be interpreted as the mythical Greek world.

However, a temporary, naturalistic and organic installation had been placed in front of the permanent set. It did have the aura of a barren and hot land, but, oddly, the drama made no reference to Palladio’s masterpiece.

CiA staffer Sally Stone has successfully obtained Erasmus Intensive Programme funding for a student project studying the relationship between architecture and archaeology in north-east Italy. The experimental workshop, run in partnership with IUAV (Venice) and ETSAB (Barcelona), will focus upon the protection of key archaeological sites in the territories of the Veneto and Trentino.

The project will kick-off the CiA BArch programme for the autumn term at Manchester School of Architecture and will result in proposals for shelters, buildings and other interventions that relate directly to the sites of archaeological interest. Staff and students will be on site in Italy for two weeks in late September.

Sally Stone coordinated the Manchester School of Architecture application collaborating with Margherita Vanore from IUAV and Pilar Cos from ETSAB for the Erasmus Intensive Programme funding. Sally and Pilar have previously worked together on the Interventions Project, an international project for students from Manchester and Barcelona.

Illustration from ‘Venice for Modern Man’ published by Italia Nostra

The 6th Modern Interiors Research Centre Conference was held at Kingston University last week. The focus was upon histories and heritage.

Among the interesting collection of papers was a description of the reconstruction of the Hotel de Ville in Paris. The speaker defined the difference between renovation and reconstruction as the same as that between a painting and it’s copy. This was followed by a detailed discussion of George III’s bed. Other topics included a description of the changes to Glasgow School of Art and the evolution of the Church of St Michael’s in Cropthorne, Wiltshire. Sally Stone, with her co-author, Graeme Brooker presented a paper that discussed the remodelling of contaminated buildings.

Fred Scott, the eminent interiors theorist presented the final keynote address, “The room, its demise and possible resurrection”. This was based upon research that he’d conducted with Robin Evans and it discussed how in the 18C, the interior and the exterior of a building could exist independently. Modernism, and with it the pursuit of transparency, has lead to this difference has becoming unobtainable: “The room has been evicted from the house”.

Artex supplied the pink champagne

…via Fabio Novembre.

CiA staffer Sally Stone has, along with her perennial collaborator Graeme Brooker and newbie Michael Coates, produced The Visual Dictionary of Interior Architecture and Design. It’s a cutely packaged book that is intended to inform and inspire. And, of course, the pictures are more prominent than the words. Except, strangely, on the cover.

More CiA books

CiA staffer Eamonn Canniffe is the editor of the Architecture series from Ashgate Publishing. Follow the link to read a brief online interview with him.

Ashgate Studies in Architecture

See ‘Contact us’ in the sidebar for contact details.

CiA: Hitting the text

In a very interesting episode of In Business this week, Peter Day was talking to Richard Florida, the author of Rise of the Creative Classes and the Director of the Martin Institute of Prosperity in Toronto.

Florida discusses the connection between musicians and other types of creative talent and the development of cities. “Geography and Creativity”, he explained, is the new spatial order.

Radio 4

Creative Class

CiA staffer Sally Stone and her co-author Graeme Brooker have just had their second book in the Basic Interior Architecture series published.

“Context & Environment” examines the ways in which elements based both inside and outside of the host building can influence and effect the interior space. The book proposes a method of interpretation, evaluation and utilisation of physical factors, such as light and orientation, the contextual issues of the urban form and the subject of sustainability, and their influences on the design of the interior and the remodelling of existing buildings.

Amazon link: Basics Interior Architecture: Context and Environment

Eamonn Canniffe has been invited to present his recent book “The Politics of the Piazza” at the prestigious De Bosis Colloquium in Italian Studies at Harvard University Department of Romance Languages and Literatures during the Spring Semester 2009.

The Politics of the Piazza: Look inside

Alexis of Hot Chip at the Le Corbusier exhibition, Liverpool (25 October 2008)

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester to open the Flights of Fancy exhibition decrying minimalism and other “delusions of blandeur” and pleased to be in the “bosomy clinch of floral and flock wallpaper” (7 November 2008)

I’m a Mac. I’m a PC. Eisenman and Jencks discuss Powerpoint problems at the RIBA Annual Discourse, Liverpool (10 November 2008)

In what can only be described as an architectural celebrity bumper period for the northwest, we have been honoured by a number of distinguished guests.

Peter Eisenman delivered the RIBA Annual Discourse 2008 at the John Moores University. His lecture entitled: “Textual Heresies: Le Corbusier and the Palais des Congrès-Strasbourg, 1962 to 1964″ was an extremely thorough discussion of the building. He also examined the relationship between available technologies and architectural design, not just technology in the construction industry, but also that, which is available in the architects studio. He commented that computers do tend to become the design drivers, complaining that: “Student work all looks the same to me, that’s why I teach Palladio, I don’t know what else to teach”. Apparently the student retort to this one is “Drawin’ Palladio poché aint gonna get me a job in Frank Gehry’s office”.

Charles Jencks introduced Peter Eisenman, describing him as “A conscience for architecture”…and… “A thorn in the side of cliché”. I think that we can all agree with that.