AALU is opening an exhibition presenting the work of a joint workshop held by AA-Landscape Urbanism and the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong.
Time: 18:00 December 14, 2010
Location: University of Hong Kong Shanghai Study Centre
上海市北苏州路298号 邮政博物馆副楼
298 North Su Zhou Road, (near Si Chuan Road)
The exhibit will continue until January 6, 2011, and is open for public viewing.
15 November 2010 at Royal Academy of Arts
In the Reynolds Room, a John Madejski Fine Room
Water has historically been a major concern for the viability of Mexico City; posing a huge challenge at a metropolitan scale, with infrastructural, social and urban implications. The scarcity of water, the increasing cost of the resource and its short-sighted management, together with infrastructural changes currently taking place – major drainage and wastewater treatment works plus plans to control and prevent flooding and landslides – all present opportunities in the recovery and management of water. With the idea of integrating water back into the landscape of Mexico City and trigger the regeneration and reconfiguration of the urban realm, The AA is organising a Visiting School in Mexico City called "Recovering Waterscapes" in which all issues associated with water will be addressed, infrastructually, historically, politically and architecturally.
To participate apply online here
Application forms can be download here
and applications can be submitted to: visitingschool@aaschool.ac.uk
for more information please visit:
AA Symposio in Mexico City: From Academia to Praxis, 11 OctoberThe director of the Mexico City Visiting School Alfredo Ramirez has organised a symposium at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City on Monday 11 October 2010.
This one-day event of lectures/presentations given by staff and alumni of the Architectural Association was a preface to the AA Visiting School in Mexico City in January 2011. The event was an opportunity to present the work and research methodologies being developed at the Architectural Association with AA graduates.
AA lecturers and guests invited to the symposium shared and commented on their own research ambitions and the use of these methodologies in practice and education. At the same time Brett Steele discussed the role of schools of architecture and his vision for the future with a distinguished group of Mexican practitioners and educators. The symposium aimed to contribute to the exchange of pedagogic ideas and it will confront the leading issues shaping architecture, design and urban culture at the outset of the 21st century.
Guests and lecturers included:
Brett Steele (London)
Michael Rojkind (Mexico)
Derek Dellekamp (Mexico)
Juan Carlos Sanabria (Costa Rica)
Jose Maria Nava (Mexico)
Kevin Mccleland (USA)
Alfredo Ramirez (London)
Carolyn Aguilar (Mexico)
Edgar Payan Pacheco (London)
Jose Arnaud (London)
NODAL LANDSCAPES- Solo Exhibition at Deutsches Architekturzentrum Berlin: Plasma Studio inaugurates Formel X- a new series of exhibitions where offices of the up-and-coming generation will present their architectural positions. The series’ focus is on design methodology & design processes. With the new series, FORMULA_X, the DAZ will open discussion on the facets of sustainable ideas and visions.
An essay by Douglas Spencer "Landscape urbanism at the Architectural Association" has been published in the latest issue of Topos Magazine:
The work in progress of AALU students 0910, together with the work of the Landscape Urbanism Unit from Costa Rica it's being shown at the Architectural Association Projects Review exhibition until the end of the month.
Nature and its more recent derivatives, like ‘environment’ or ‘sustainability’, are ‘empty’ signifiers. There is no such thing as a singular Nature around which an environmental policy or an environmentally sensitive planning/architecture can be constructed and performed. Rather, there are a multitude of natures and a multitude of existing, possible or practical socio-natural relations. The obsession with a singular Nature that requires ‘sustaining’ or, at least, ‘managing’, is sustained by a particular ‘quilting’ of Nature that forecloses asking political questions about immediately and really possible alternative socio-natural arrangements. I conclude with a call for a politicization of the environment, one that is predicated upon the recognition of the indeterminacy of nature, the constitutive split of the people, the unconditional democratic demand of political equality, and the real possibility for the inauguration of different possible public socio-ecological futures that express the democratic presumptions of freedom and equality. 
The Urban Surface - public, glorious, urgent"Programming the Urban Surface" is the title of an article Alex Wall contributed to Recovering Landscape, edited by James Corner and published in 1999. In the early days of landscape urbanism, the article looked at the emergence of projects, nascent theories and the potential significance of an "extensive" design of the urban landscape. Since its publication, the twin forces of urbanization and climate change bring a far more urgent focus on the performance of public space and the public realm. The lecture will consider the design of the urban surface with respect to the city as a context "as found," to questions of density, social equity, and as Philippe Rahm has put it, "public space becomes the place where the quality of air is defined. 
AA Landscape Urbanism tutor and Groundlab Director Alfredo Ramirez will lecture at the International congress “Designing Ecotown”in Pescara Facoltá di Architettura,Italy, on 13th may. In “From the academia to the praxis” Alfredo will present the research of the AALU MA and its application in the large scale urban projects Groundlab has been developing recently.
